


branded

by deniigiq



Series: Inimitable Verse [21]
Category: Daredevil (Comics), Daredevil (TV), Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Anxiety, Complicated Relationships, Friendship, Gen, Identity Reveal, M/M, POV Outsider, Secret Identity, Self-Doubt, So Much Fucking Friendship, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, minor terrorism, times like 5?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:28:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24845320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: “Well,” Ave drawled. “I’m just sayin’ that if Pete’s Spidey, then we need to give him time and space to tell us that. It should be his decision. But, in the meantime, maybe we can ask around some of his people to send him an appropriate ‘thank you’ gift, so you know, he knows he’s loved.”That…was a remarkably thoughtful idea.“Aw thanks, I got it from my brain,” Ave said.“How do we do that, though?” Leo asked. “What’re we supposed to do, just waltz on up to a copycat and be like ‘hey, I’m your boss’s coworker, does he like Emmental or Brie better?”Ave sniffed.“Why not?” she asked.(Peter's fellow lab managers figure out that he's Spiderman after he saves their lives in an incident at Stark Industries. They try to figure out how to say thank you without blowing his cover and ruining their friendship.)
Relationships: Ben Parker & May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker, Matt Murdock & Peter Parker & Wade Wilson, Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & his Coworkers, Peter Parker & the copycats
Series: Inimitable Verse [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1117746
Comments: 265
Kudos: 1058





	1. to ask what is to ask who

**Author's Note:**

> They were bound to find out eventually, guys. 
> 
> For reference, the lab managers are as follows: Saanvi Malik, Himani Gupta, Leo Stanton, Bo Kilkenny, and Avery James. 
> 
> Art of them here: https://deniigi.tumblr.com/image/615049825315110912

When Peter pulled his arm away from his face, blood dripped off his elbow.

His eyes seemed brighter, like there was a fire dancing in the irises—but that was all Saanvi saw before his face snapped back away from her and he lunged.

He lunged.

Like an animal.

Too fast to be human. Fluid and jolting—like a snake launching out of its coil to strike.

Peter struck.

He slammed his dripping elbow right into the center of the metal visor overhead, glinting and shimmering with the flames and alarm lights around them.

Peter screamed with the impact of his knuckles and the visor under them crumpled inwards like it was made of paper.

The visor’s owner in their enormous, glitching metal suit collapsed to the lab floor in a cacophony of clanging and Peter stood almost still, silhouetted against the flames and flashing lights for just a moment.

He panted. His shoulders rose and fell heavily with each breath. Saanvi couldn’t see his face from where she’d taken cover with Himani and Chao under one of the tables, but she watched as he dropped to his knees.

And then she watched as he fell, slowly, as though in slow-motion, to join the metal suit on the floor.

The fires raged on. The alarms continued to scream.

But the lab had somehow gone still and quiet.

The emergency services team carried and dragged them all out wearing tactical gear and shouting into radios as they went. Saanvi’s forearms were covered in shattered glass. The EMT who had been kneeling in front of her told her not to move them and not to try to touch any of the glass.

They had taken Himani away first. Chao had vanished into the crowd of bodies ahead of the ambulance.

Saanvi’s hands shined like glitter in the harsh lights, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Peter.

Peter slamming into the lab wall.

Peter picking himself up off the floor with his labcoat slipping off his shoulders.

Peter catching the next unrelenting blow with two forearms and getting hurled into the cabinets from the momentum.

His back couldn’t take that kind of damage. It had to be broken.

But he’d rolled off the counter under the cabinets just as the visor’s owner jumped from a lab table with a metal fist curled. That fist had landed right were Peter’s chest had been. It would have crushed his heart right through his ribs if he hadn’t, somehow, gotten himself off that counter.

Saanvi had lost sight of him for a moment; she’d only seen the visor screaming in fury at having missed its target, but the next thing she knew, a flask had shattered against the back of its head. It spun around and soon enough, there was Peter again.

His coat sailed through the air behind him as he, himself, went soaring through the air with nigh-pointed toes. He, to her surprise, went downwards at such an angle so as to slide between the visor’s legs. He ran into the drawers on the other side hard and took barely a second to wipe his mouth. Then, just as the visor was turning around, he lurched forward.

And then that was it.

The visor went down.

Peter went down.

Everything else was a blur and a mess of her own bleeding, glistening skin.

The lab was destroyed. The whole side of the building actually. It was burnt and smelled too strongly for Saanvi to make herself stay in it.

Mr. Stark issued a formal apology to all employees for what had happened. He explained that security methods were being reviewed and that all staff, if they were experiencing any symptoms—physical or mental—related to the trauma were to report to the medical bay or their medical facility of choice and explain that they had been part of the incident. Treatment was being covered under ‘acts of terrorism.’

And that was great for the medical bills soon to be sitting in the basket at the end of Saanvi’s counter, but that explained nothing about why no one knew what had happened to Peter.

Leo had gone back into the smoldering lab with a few Emergency service guys, but Peter hadn’t been on the floor. Smears of blood—awful, nearly black drips and swipes of it, suggested that he’d moved, but no one knew exactly where to.

That wasn’t true, actually.

It was weird, but Jakobson from Lab 30 said that she’d seen Peter.

Arnolds from lab 31 had seen Peter, too. Xia and Egebe and Drager said that they’d seen him fighting those visored things in their labs. His coat had been torn and burnt and his face was bloody and his fists were, too, but they’d all seen him fighting just like Saanvi and Himani and Avery and Leo had.

He’d even carried little Steph out of the main office and put her in the stairwell away from the danger.

He’d broken the fire door trapping people in the corridor in half. His smeared, bloody handprints where found on the cracked half that had been left in the center of that hallway.

People had _seen_ Peter after he’d fallen. And most of them just assumed that he’d been swept up by the EMTs and carried out.

But it didn’t make sense.

Peter was a crisis manager—no one had any delusions as to why he’d been put on their team. Lab manager, Saanvi’s ass. Peter was on their team because Mr. Stark had specifically assigned him to it to put a stop to any situation before it become lethal.

Every team had one; it was just not always so obvious who bore that title per floor.

It was pretty obvious for their team—they had a bunch of notorious troublemakers in their research staff, all six of them. Almost all of their combined staff had been written up at least twice for reckless behavior in the workplace. Saanvi knew why she was here. She was an organizer. Himani was a herder. Leo was a diffuser. Bo was a strongman and Ave was a driver. And so Peter could only be the crisis manager.

But this?

This wasn’t crisis managing on a lab level.

This was full-out combat.

Peter wasn’t a crisis manager.

Peter was a one-man Emergency Service.

And somehow, Saanvi just knew that that wasn’t an accident and he had just been carried out of the building on the shoulders of a few paramedics.

Leo came by her apartment with Himani and Ave and said that Bo was okay, still recovering from the smoke inhalation, but okay. No one had seen Peter yet.

“It’s weird, though,” Himani said. She brushed her fingers along the petals of the iris in the bouquet that they’d brough with them.

“It’s like no one’s even looking for him,” Leo finished for her.

That’s because they weren’t, Saanvi was sure of it.

She knew where Peter was.

And, over the last few days of denial, she’d come to the unhappy realization that she knew even more than that.

She knew _who_ he was, too.

The other didn’t believe her at first, and why should they?

Peter was just a dude.

Just a normal guy. A little weird, yeah. A little witchy, sure. Kind of an oddball with a few screws loose.

But they came around.

There were just too many coincidences that they’d all stupidly taken for granted.

Himani got all choked up when she whispered that Peter was from Queens. Peter was always late. Peter was always bruised or scratched or falling asleep at his desk. He drank whole flats of energy drinks with no medical consequences. A caffeine overdose didn’t seem like it was even on his radar.

He ate like shit.

He slept never.

He was always telling jokes and snickering at them, even when no one else did.

Himani had seen him pick up desks and tables and whole vats of chemicals like he was picking through a bunch of apples at the supermarket. Leo had seen him talking to Avengers. Ave had been there when Peter had been a temp research staff member working directly with Mr. Stark.

He’d worked in the basement lab and in the top-level labs. Those were for Avenger development. Most research staff never even touched either of those places without a PhD, a post-doc, and 15 or more years of experience under their belts. And yet here was, at the time, sweet, little Peter Parker, 22 years old and fresh out of undergrad. Handling collected alien tech and repairing chips in Captain America’s shield.

There was no way.

It was a cover.

It was all a cover.

At the very least, Peter was enhanced, but Saanvi knew that that wasn’t the end of it. There were plenty of enhanced people in the world. Plenty of folks just living their lives the best that they could, working with whatever abilities their circumstances had landed them with.

Those folks didn’t come into work every other week looking like they’d barely escaped a bar brawl.

What Saanvi had on her hands, right in front of her, wasn’t some regular old enhanced person.

She—no, _they_ —were all looking directly at Peter Parker.

Directly at Spiderman.

Himani said that it wasn’t their business who Peter was and what he did on his own time. So what if he was Spiderman? What did that even mean? Spiderman had a right to a job. Spiderman had a right to a wage and weird habits and privacy.

People couldn’t just be Spiderman all the time, you know, she told Saanvi. Something’s gotten give in that kind of lifestyle, and anyways, Peter wasn’t just their coworker. He was their friend. He’d saved their lives. And okay, so maybe he was a flagrantly violent superhero with next to no impulse control and maybe he had been specifically hired by Mr. Stark to maintain order among their group of wily trouble-making lab staff—he was still just a guy.

He’d proved that over and over and over and he’d never put anyone in the lab into danger and that Visor Dude hadn’t been attacking him as Spiderman, he’d been attacking him as one of Ironman’s minions.

“Peter’s not a threat to us,” Himani explained. “But you know what? _We’re_ a threat to him. If he finds out that we know, think of how he’s gonna feel. Look at what happened to Daredevil—people kept pushing him and pushing him, trying to figure out who he was and threatening to ruin his life and his career and the lives and careers of everyone around him and he left, guys. He had enough and left, and Hell’s Kitchen has never been the same. My uncle lives there, okay? He said that everyone in Hell’s Kitchen had an idea of who Daredevil was, but they all kept their mouths shut because they knew what would happen if they blabbed. And sure enough, as soon as he cleared out, the streets got bad again.”

Saanvi understood that.

Really, she did. And she appreciated now that walking up to Peter and telling him point blank that they knew what team he was playing for wasn’t a good idea.

But that wasn’t what she wanted to tell him anyways.

She wanted to thank him.

For everything.

For being her friend. For being so humble. For being so messy and charming. And for struggling through the real shit right alongside the rest of them in a thankless job for a thankless company in a thankless city.

All this time, Peter had believed in all of them, not as coworkers, but as New Yorkers and he’d put his life on the line hundreds of time for everyone in that building and honestly? He deserved to be thanked for that.

Ave said that she agreed, but A) they didn’t have confirmation that Peter was, in fact, Spiderman and not like, one of the copycats flying around or that Daredevil offshoot dude with the pecs. B), she said, Peter didn’t do well with compliments. They’d all seen him flounder and lock himself into the copy room anytime someone tried to tell him he was doing a good job. And C) Maybe ‘thanks’ in Spidey language didn’t have to look like a confrontation. Maybe it could look like a basket of flowers or essential oils or liquified bugs—whatever it was that Spidermen consumed for their physical and spiritual health in their offtime.

“What are you saying, Ave?” Saanvi asked her directly.

“Well,” Ave drawled. “I’m just sayin’ that if Pete’s Spidey, then we need to give him time and space to tell us that. It should be his decision. But, in the meantime, maybe we can ask around some of his people to send him an appropriate ‘thank you’ gift, so you know, he knows he’s loved.”

That…was a remarkably thoughtful idea.

“Aw thanks, I got it from my brain,” Ave said.

“How do we do that, though?” Leo asked. “What’re we supposed to do, just waltz on up to a copycat and be like ‘hey, I’m your boss’s coworker, does he like Emmental or Brie better?”

Ave sniffed.

“Why not?” she asked.

Himani let loose a particularly manic cackle and then trailed off to cover her face with her hands.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” she whimpered.

Saanvi couldn’t either. But she couldn’t think of any better ideas, so she was game.

Every good plan started with research, despite what everyone else groaned and moaned about. Even Bo, raspy and ruddy, sneered at her when they were informed of the current plan and circumstances.

“Fruit basket,” they insisted hoarsely. “I’m tellin’ y’all. Parker’s nearly vegetarian. He fuckin’ loves fruit. Actually, you know what he loves more than fruit? Fuckin’ _yogurt_. That man is a yogurt machine.”

Bo was of the opinion that they didn’t need to be doing research so much as brainstorming and giving Peter his Spidey-space.

“I saw ‘im,” Bo declared. “Right before my ass passed out. Man went tearing through the lab covered in blood and glass and shit and broke the damn fire door with his _bare hands,_ y’all. He smashed one of the plexiglass windows. You know, the _bulletproof_ ones? I’m sure he’s fuckin’ fine, to be honest. I’m sure he’s havin’ a nap in his spiderweb with all his dried-up, lifeless flies and moths and pillbugs, havin’ a grand ol’ time. And who the fuck are we to interrupt that?”

Smoke inhalation was bad for Bo’s team spirit.

Saanvi told them to stuff it and open their laptop to be helpful. Bo said that it they weren’t on the clock, but Ave, thankfully, swooped in to save the day, saying that they had to figure out a way to get close enough to one of the skittish spiderpeople and Bo’s fascination with insects was imperative to that goal.

Bo was weak for Avery.

Ave pretended like she didn’t know this and that she wasn’t letting her shirt slide open just that little extra bit to show of her near-negligible cleavage.

Bo said that they weren’t doing any of this for any of them in the room and they wanted the record to show that they’d been coerced and tricked into participation.

They were awarded this.

And so the quest began.

The hard part was figuring out the four different Spidermen and their patterns of movement. Peter _appeared_ to be the original guy. Based on the size of his thighs and his nipped waist, anyways.

That would never not be wild.

All these months everyone had been teasing him about his massive thighs and the fact that he had the physique of a model and the eating habits of a stoned tortoise. And yet everyone fell over themselves talking about Spidey’s hotness levels and what they’d like him to do to them.

God, poor Peter.

Constant objectification and harassment. How did he cope with that all?

“It’s probably easier to deal with than fighting the Lizard and Rhino every other weekend,” Ave pointed out.

That was true.

“Peter can’t be hot, though,” Himani said. “No one call him hot. He’s got a dumb face.”

That was also true.

“Guys, Peter can be hot,” Leo sighed. “He doesn’t have to be a superhero to be allowed to be hot.”

They were getting off track.

The point was that Peter was Spidey 1, and he had no fucking boundaries. Seriously, this guy needed a talking to. He was all over the city, all the time. The other Spideys were a little less adventurous. The pink gal seemed to stick with the Southeast of the Bronx, the tall, gangly guy seemed to stay a little more north of there, in addition to venturing down south as far as Harlem. The baby Spidey--bless him, look at those knobbly little knees—kept to Brooklyn, although he was known to venture into Queens and up north into lower Manhattan on occasion.

But these Spideys weren’t the only people Peter apparently hung with.

Saanvi had a heart attack upon seeing the videos of Peter in his red and blue suit swaying to whatever tune he had in his head (and he always had one in his head) while Deadpool crept up behind him, swaying in time in the exact opposite pattern.

There were a lot of videos of Spiderman and Deadpool—sometimes fighting. Peter was completely unafraid to slap Deadpool out of his space and his face and, in one entertaining clip, off a building. But other times, he seemed pretty chill with the man. Almost friendly.

No, screw that.

Actually friendly.

A lot of lines started appearing between the dots of Mr. Stark hiring Deadpool to be Peter’s bodyguard a while back.

“Maybe Peter’s the only one who can control him,” Ave hypothesized.

Maybe?

The internet had a lot of pictures and videos of those two together. Peter’s suit got smaller and smaller the further they went back. So the point where Saanvi could even find pictures of the original Spidersuit shoving Deadpool out of his face up on a rooftop.

Long-time friends, then, apparently.

Huh.

“Nose goes to talk to Deadpool,” Bo rasped.

Hands slapped faces, but Himani and Saanvi lost out as a pair.

“I’m gonna _cry_ ,” Himani announced.

Saanvi’s arms hurt, even as she tried to avoid jostling them around on the train from Queens to the Upper West Side, where Deadpool was apparently often seen wearing normal people clothes.

Himani was just about vibrating next to her, mumbling about who her rabbit would go to in the case of her untimely death.

Saanvi did not point out that her rabbit was not her rabbit but her brother’s rabbit. Emotions were running a little high and Himani needed to be prevented from having a full Himani-typical meltdown on their crowded train.

A man saw the two of them together and Saanvi’s stiff, bandaged arms, and offered her his seat. She smiled at him and shook her head politely. If she left Himani’s peripheral vision, Himani would shatter the windows of the car with the scream she was just barely holding back.

It was a nice gesture though.

Deadpool was surprisingly easy to find, although that probably had to do with the fact that Himani was wearing bright pink sneakers with pastel rainbow laces. A tiny girl with a ponytail came hauling ass from one of the corners to alert Himani that her shoes were _the coolest_.

She offered to trade one of her Blue X-men sneakers with Wolverine on the side for one of Himani’s.

This was not the weirdest request Himani had ever experienced in the Upper West Side and she said that she wasn’t sure the girl’s would fit, so they had a problem.

To this, this precious, precious child announced, “Oh. You got boats. Okay, hold on, I’ll be right back.”

She scampered off and Himani and Saanvi watched as she squeezed through the bars in the fence around a borderline-shabby apartment complex. She crossed the sad little green space and scrambled up the fire-escapes up to the sixth floor like an Olympic climber.

Saanvi was in awe.

Himani said that they needed to scram before she had to make good on a trade she wasn’t prepared for, but she stopped in her pulling at Saanvi’s beltloop when the girl stopped her mad dash and plastered herself against the window of one of the apartments.

It opened. The tiny girl pointed out to street level.

It closed.

The tiny girl let loose a scream that sent even Himani’s eyebrow’s shooting up her face.

The window re-opened and Deadpool, sans mask, threw himself out of it to cover the girl’s whole face with his hands as his neighbors on either side made a mad dash to their windows to see what was the matter. He seemed to be telling them that she was _fine_.

The girl wriggled out of his grip, which must not have been that tight, and pointed insistently out to street level.

Deadpool smiled until his neighbors left and sunk down to the girl’s level with a fist clenched in front of his mouth.

“Dude,” Himani said. “Is that his kid?”

It had to be his kid.

Holy shit.

The girl flung herself at the fire-escape railing out of nowhere and Deadpool caught her without missing a beat and rolled his whole upper body in agony at the thought of apparently having to give in to his kid’s whining.

And sure enough, not three minutes later, Himani and Saanvi watched as the girl popped right back between the bars of the fence. She was all smiles.

“I got ‘im,” she said proudly.

Uh-huh. You sure did, honey.

Deadpool swore when he got to the iron bars. Saanvi recognized him by the shape of his head and shoulders now. She wouldn’t have guessed from all the scars on his face. He looked so different from how she’d pictured him under the mask. He’d been so gentle with Steph back in the office.

Oh.

Maybe that was because…

Saanvi looked back at the little girl.

Ah.

He’d seen hid kid in Steph.

“Uh? Hi?” Himani said.

Deadpool stopped evaluating the fence and muttering about chickenwire to notice them.

He visibly panicked.

That was new.

“Ellie,” he said. “Here. Now.”

Ellie and her ponytail perked up at her name and her eyebrows dropped at the tone.

“Never,” she snapped.

Himani made a soft shriek that was probably meant to be a mix between a hysterical and nervous laugh.

“Eleanor,” Deadpool warned.

“Daddy,” Ellie snapped back. “I got business with these people. An’ you’re _embarrassin’_ me.”

Saanvi couldn’t laugh. She couldn’t. That was Deadpool’s daughter. That was how you got killed.

“Those aren’t business people,” Deadpool said.

“Actually,” Himani piped up in a high voice, “We’ve met before, Mr., uh. Pool.”

Oh, he knew. Saanvi could see it in his eyes.

“From Stark Industries?” Himani tried. “A few months ago you were the body guard for our coworker Peter—”

“Tío.”

Himani went dead silent. She and Saanvi directed their gaze to little Ellie.

“Our?” Himani creaked again.

“Tío,” Ellie repeated.

Deadpool slapped a hand over his face and dragged it down, muttering more furiously than ever.

Maybe he could keep a secret. But his kid could not.

Aw. Saanvi kinda felt for him.

Deadpool said they couldn’t talk shop on the street and invited them up to his apartment. His actual apartment. Like.

 _Deadpool’s apartment_.

Saanvi would have pinched herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming except her arms had recently been full of glass.

“You’re a mummy,” Ellie told her.

Deadpool picked her bodily up off the living room hardwood and said he’d just be a moment. He took Ellie around the corner and the sound of a door closing sounded out. A muffled Dad-voice filtered through the wall.

Himani turned her head to stare into Saanvi’s soul.

“We’re doing this,” she mouthed.

They sure were.

Saanvi jumped at something brushing against her legs.

It was a cat. A big, round cat that was mostly black with white splotches and huge yellow-green eyes. She meowed the most polite meow in the history of cats.

“Oh no,” Himani said, her brow crumpling. “I love her.”

Deadpool’s apartment was themed. The cat kind of encapsulated it. Everything was black and white in some way with little splashes of color here and there.

He was a punk kind of guy.

Huh.

That tracked.

He eventually came out of what was presumably Ellie’s room and closed the door behind him to a muffled scream.

He studied Saanvi and Himani standing by his couch. Himani was holding his cat like a baby.

“What time is it?” he asked.

Uh? 3:50?

“Wrong answer,” he said. “It’s drinkin’ time.”

Oh, okay then.


	2. burning rivers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Consider yourself no longer my teammate,” Blindspot said.  
> “What does Spidey need out of life right now?” Kiddo asked out of nowhere.

Neither Himani or Saanvi drank, and Deadpool was very considerate about that. He offered them ‘spicy water.’

This was seltzer.

He called it that because Ellie, or, as he referred to her sweetly, ‘the offspring,’ wouldn’t have it spoken of by any other name in the house.

“I didn’t realize you were a father,” Himani commented as DP set a lime and ginger flavored water on a coaster in front of her.

“Me either,” he said. “World goes by at the speed of light, I’m tellin’ ya. One day, you’re mindin’ your own damn business, the next you’ve got a three-year-old.”

Ah.

So Ellie was _not_ planned.

“She doesn’t live here full-time,” DP said, as though justifying something. Maybe trying to get them not to call CPS. “Her foster mom’s just got a lot going on right now, so it’s Daddy-daughter time.”

Another muffled scream sounded through Ellie’s door.

“Seems like it’s going well,” Himani said.

“She’ll get over it,” DP said. “So what brings you here, coworkers of Peter Parker?”

“Tío,” Saanvi said.

DP winced hard.

“We’re gonna work on that,” he said.

“She calls him ‘Tío,’” Saanvi repeated. “That kind of adds fuel to our fires, if you know what I mean.”

DP pursed his lips. His scars, Saanvi could see now, were different colors and textures and limited some of the movement of his face, but despite that, he remained fairly expressive.

“I’m afraid I’m lost, ladies,” he decided with a smile. “She calls everyone uncle these days.”

Yeah, right.

“And I’m Lady Liberty,” Himani said seriously. She set down the cat. “Listen, DP. We have a pretty good idea of who exactly Peter is and how exactly you know him—and it’s not because you were his bodyguard that one time, is it?”

Deadpool gave nothing away.

“This is unfortunate,” he said flatly.

Saanvi’s heartrate leapt.

He was going to kill them? Just like that? They were going to die here? In a punk-themed living room with a very nice cat?

Wow.

Okay, like, not the worst way to go. But still, wow.

Deadpool stood up abruptly and dug his phone out of a pocket and every sense of self-preservation in Himani’s body abandoned her.

She tackled him.

Saanvi could only gape.

“DON’T DO THAT,” Himani shrieked. She snatched the phone up off the ground where it had fallen and crammed it against her chest. “Don’t do that,” she pleaded. “It doesn’t matter to us, okay? He’s still our friend. And we’re not trying to get him to tell us. Don’t call him. We just—we just wanted to do something nice for him. He saved our lives the other day, DP. We just want to thank him while, you know, respecting his whole, uh, deal.”

DP stared down at her in silence. Saanvi felt the cat squeeze past her and hop off the couch to go sit and stare up at him.

“You _don’t_ want to use this information for evil?” DP asked slowly.

“No,” Saanvi said over the couch. “Himani’s telling the truth. We just want to—”

“SURPRISE.”

The whole room jumped.

Ellie beamed dastardly from the door.

“I got out,” she announced.

Ellie was a handful. Himani whispered as much when she came back around to awkwardly settle down on the couch next to Saanvi again. She petted the cat more furiously and ever. The cat made pancakes against her skirt.

DP re-emerged from screaming-child-land and came to stand suspiciously behind the love seat.

“Clarifying,” he said with eons less patience than before. “You don’t want to out Spiderkid for moral or fiscal gain, revenge, or coerced romantic purposes?”

Was that…a problem…in the past?

DP recoiled from them with flared nostrils.

“I ain’t prepared for this,” he mumbled to himself. “The fuck am I supposed to do with this, huh? Who—ah. There we go, that’s a thought.”

“I’m gonna make a call,” he said. “And depending on that call, I’ll hear you out. Fair?”

Well, that was easy enough?

DP huffed at them and dug out his phone again—with a suspicious eye on Himani this time. He didn’t drop the eye as he dialed a number. Paranoid, Saanvi told herself. Deadpool was known to be schizophrenic and paranoid.

She watched as he watched them and then she watched as he placed his phone, with a dialing tone blaring out of its speaker, on the wooden coffee table between them.

“Who is it?” Himani whispered.

“My conscious,” DP told her.

“Go die, Wade,” a voice said immediately from it.

“I got a problem in front of me, Red,” DP said back without missing a beat or taking his eyes off Saanvi and Himani.

“Give her some Benadryl,” ‘Red’ said. “Works wonders. I did it to the apprentice yesterday and he’s still pissed. Somethin’ about ‘nonconsensual druggin’’ or whatever. You should have felt the heat he was puttin’ off though; he’d’ve hissed in water--”

“It ain’t Ellie, Hornhead,” DP said. “I got two of the Spiderkid’s coworkers sittin’ in my damn livin’ room tryin’ to tell me they want somethin’ and don’t want it for evil.”

There was a pause and then a laugh barked out across the line and Saanvi realized in shock that that was Daredevil. _The_ Daredevil on the phone. Right there. Laughing. Like a real person.

Holy shit.

He sounded handsome?

Wait. No, not handsome. More like charming. Like the kind of chatty guy you’d bump into on the street who’d apologize and call you ‘darlin’’ and then run into a streetpost and laugh it off with you.

All that, but just an eensy bit more mean-spirited, just like—kinda like—oh.

Kinda like Peter.

“You let ‘em in your _house_ , you moron?” Daredevil asked, still snickering. “You slippin’ in your old age?”

DP sighed and scrubbed a hand across his face.

“Kid was makin’ a scene,” he said.

“Benadryl,” Daredevil repeated. “God made it; it’s gotta be good for her.”

“Red, buddy, your sister lies to you and you need to stop believing her. Anyways, her mom’ll know, and that’s not the point,” DP said. “I got bad static today. I need a voice of reason.”

“Ah,” Daredevil said. He cleared his throat. “Am I on speaker?”

Yes, he was and Saanvi was shitting herself over it.

“Copy that,” DP said.

“Okay, well, first of all let the record show that I, Displaced Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, do not condone non-consensual drugging, except when certain bodies are too stubborn to realize their throats are closing,” Daredevil said. “Second of all, I require more information regarding this situation. Let’s start with names, ages, addresses, emails, and uh…hold on I’m making a spreadsheet—”

Oh _no_.

Daredevil was _organized_.

Saanvi could never had foreseen this. No one could have foreseen this. Himani’s sudden iron grip on Saanvi’s arm was proof.

“HI,” Himani blurted out. “I’m Himani Gupta and my friend is Saanvi Malik. We work with Peter at SI and we just want to know what to do for him to thank him for all the shit he does for us at work and like, New York in general.”

There was a long, long silence on the other side of the line.

“One moment, please,” Daredevil said politely. He seemed to set his phone down on something hard to shout “APPRENTICE.”

There was a clatter and a rustling sound followed by a soft “Sup, Bossman?”

“Dilemma,” Daredevil’s far-away voice said. “I need your people skills.”

“Not today you don’t,” the softer voice said. “Peace, old ma—HNG.”

“What was that?”

“Nng.”

“Thank you.”

Himani released Saanvi’s arm and began stroking the cat anxiously again.

Daredevil explained what was going on to his apprentice which was followed by a “Dude, what? Hell no. No one’s that nice.”

Which was not reassuring.

“These are my thoughts,” Daredevil said. “But Stark does have a tendency to hire idealists. Case in point, Spiderkid.”

Oh, wow.

He wasn’t just charming and organized, he was sharp. No wonder mobsters in Hell’s Kitchen hated him.

“Okay? So trust them?” DD’s apprentice told him flatly.

“No,” Daredevil said. “This is my Achilles’ heel. I hear charity and it speaks to my soul, I need a second opinion.”

“I mean, I say no. I don’t trust anyone, especially not anyone with ‘manager’ in their title, but you do you, teach,” DD’s apprentice said.

Dude. You aren’t helping.

“Copy that, thank you, you’re dismissed. You may return to being a menace,” Daredevil said, then back to the phone he said, “I have no strong feelings on this. Seems to me that they might be genuine. If they are associated with both the Spiderkid and Stark that would be unsurprising. So I guess listen to White, Wade, and the rest of us will follow suit. But get their information for my spreadsheet. I do love to have an address to call on in the event that something goes awry.”

He hung up.

DP pressed his knuckles firmly against his lips.

“That was not helpful,” he said.

He looked up to Saanvi sadly with oddly puppyish eyes?

“White took the day off,” he said miserably. “So I only got Yellow to go with. And it’s sayin’ to tell you everything, so? I guess? We’re doing that now?”

Oh.

Okay, that would work?

DP—or rather, ‘Wade,’ as he said to call him—listened to the full story and held his head and sighed. He then got up and dug a laptop out from under what appeared to the cat’s bed and brought it over to them.

He budged them over and settled in between them and brought up a window with a fuckload of folders in it with different configurations of random words on them. The cat seized her opportunity and abandoned Himani’s arms to lay on Wade’s hands.

He worked through her. Saanvi was impressed.

Wade opened a folder full of spreadsheets and then opened one of those spreadsheets and dumped the whole laptop into Saanvi’s lap.

“You got thirty,” he said. “Go wild. You didn’t get it from me. I’ve never seen either of you in my life.”

Wade had an honest to god spreadsheet of information on Peter.

It was _incredible_. Saanvi wanted Wade to be employed with payroll. He had details in there that Saanvi swore that Peter himself probably didn’t even know about himself.

‘right-dominant with hands; balances left-dominant with feet.’

‘tic – oversharing’

‘tic – foot tapping’

‘tic – stress singing’

‘aversion to overripe pineapple.’

‘aversion to cilantro.’

‘aversion to repetitive, high-pitched sound. See: dog whistle. See: mosquito. See: alien tech.’

‘Familial relationships – Aunt. Uncle (deceased). Mother (deceased). Father (deceased). 0 siblings. Alienated from other relatives due to senility, old age, and aunt’s strained relationships with her mother and sister.’

‘aversion to grasshoppers (why?)’

‘tic--PURRING?????’

‘Preference – resting in upside-down posture (brain chemistry?)’

‘Preference – nocturnal behavior (need for sleep = >4hr for functionality; <2hrs = anxious/manic behavior)’

‘Sight – possibly enhanced. Far-sighted (corrective lenses for reading).’

‘Note: multiverse connection. (mistrustful of it. Keep it that way.)’

And so on and so on.

Saanvi didn’t know what some of this meant, but Himani was typing in her phone at light-speed.

“What’s purring?” Saanvi asked over the back of the couch.

Wade had unleashed Ellie from her prison and had given her a bowl of sprinkles to sort into colors to put on her afternoon snack. He was a master distractor.

“Tío purrrrrrrrs,” Ellie explained, “With Bella!”

Bella?

“The cat,” Wade said. “Spiderkid communes with her.”

Dude, what?

“I have no idea, I’ve been trying to work out the limits of his mutations for years,” Wade said, shaking his head and moving the jar of cookie butter on the counter out of Ellie’s reach. “They change. Used to be more predictable. Some of it got more spidery, some of it got less. He don’t sleep upside-down anymore, thank Christ.”

…Peter you whackjob. How did you keep any of this under wraps?

Their thirty minutes gleaned them much information about Peter that there was no way they ever could have guessed. Wade was tired and conflicted. Ellie had calmed down at a bit and had climbed up on the counter next to him while he washed dishes in the sink.

He was very far from the Deadpool that Saanvi had expected to experience.

Himani set the laptop on the counter when they were done and thanked him and he just nodded.

“If I hear any of that out on the streets, I’m afraid it’s lights out for the two of you,” he said.

Message received.

“Uncle Peter’s Dad’s favorite,” Ellie said.

“No, bubba, you are,” Wade told her.

Himani melted.

“After me, it’s Uncle Peter then,” Ellie hummed. “Be nice to him okay? Or I’ll fight ya for your shoe.”

“We will be so nice,” Himani promised her. “We won’t tell a soul about any of this. And thank you.”

She said that up to Wade. Wade didn’t meet her eye. He just waved her off.

“That happened,” Himani said when they were back out on the street.

“It happened,” Saanvi confirmed for her.

“That really happened. Peter’s Spidey,” Himani said. “DP confirmed that Peter’s Spidey—oh my _god_. Saanvi, he’s so stupid. He _purrs_. We have to make him purr.”

Saanvi still didn’t know what that meant.

“It doesn’t matter,” Himani said. “I’m putting it on my bucket list. I’m getting a tinkle ball for him and seeing what he does. I’m getting a feather--we need to find Leo and Bo.”

Ah, right. It was getting late.

Leo and Bo had gone to Brooklyn and when Saanvi and Himani texted them in triumph of a mission well-completed, they got a mixture of increasingly red emojis back from Bo that indicated that their experience was not universal.

**BK:** THIS KID IS 12 FUCKING YEARS OLD

 **LS:** He doesn’t want to talk to us guys

 **BK:** I COULD BREAK HIM IN HALF

 **LS:** I tried telling him it was for a good cause and he asked me if I was a cop

 **BK:** He called me a NARC

 **AJ:** lololol that’s ‘cause you are a narc

 **BK:** oh Im a narc am I??? How’s Pink, Ave, huh?

 **AJ:** idk everyone here says she only comes out after 8

 **AJ:** I asked folks about the other guy too and they say that he’s gonna be much easier to talk to. But the best bet on finding him is to get held at knifepoint

 **LS:** let’s not do that

 **AJ:** so I got a knife but idk how to like, hold it? Should I find a basketball court or a park or something to stand in? Is that where people get mugged?

 **LS:** Ave. I love you.

 **AJ:** aw nice

 **BK:** no you perfect idiot YOU need to be held at knifepoint

 **AJ:** yeah I’m trying man

 **SM:** you can’t hold yourself at knifepoint, Ave, I think they mean that you need the real deal

 **AJ:** yeah but I can’t manufacture that

 **BK:** DONT

 **AJ:** for real tho last time I got mugged it was def by cornerstore so in terms of probability should we go with the park or cornerstore? I’m estimating like a 5.28% just generally from being here from the crime stats online, but they don’t divide things up by geography, you know?

 **HG:** someone take that thing from her before she gets arrested. We’re headed to Brooklyn guys. See you soon.

 **AJ:** oh actually now that you mention it the 3rd time I got mugged it was in an alley so I’m gonna find an alley y’all

 **BK:** someone buy me 14 years of therapy please. avery why THE FUCK DO YOU GET MUGGED SO MUCH

 **LS:** have you seen her?

 **BK:** nvm you’re right and I’m a fool

Brooklyn during the golden hour was a lovely place to be. The part of Brooklyn Leo and Bo were in was a little darker. Himani and Saanvi found them standing underneath a McDonald’s sign at sunset, staring up at a tiny silhouette staring back down at them with huge white eyes.

He was so, so tiny.

Saanvi had to swallow her ‘awww.’

Himani did not.

“They chased him up a tree,” she deadpanned.

“Up the golden arches,” Saanvi agreed.

“He’s never coming down, those morons,” Himani sighed.

Mmmm. Well.

“My cousin’s about that age,” Saanvi said. “And Wade says that Peter’s metabolism is like, off the charts right?”

Himani lifted an eyebrow at her.

“Where are you going with this?” she asked.

“Brooklyn Spidey does sticky hands things,” Saanvi said. “The Bronx Spideys don’t do that. So maybe Brooklyn Spidey is enhanced like Peter?”

“Which means?” Himani said.

Saanvi blinked at her.

“You got a five?” she asked.

Baby Spidey had to be under the age of 16, and if Saanvi knew anything about under-16 boys, it was that they were _always_ hungry.

She offered the burger box up to him.

“Snack for info?” she asked.

Those big white eyes snapped away from Bo’s growling in barely a second.

“Snack?” a squeaky Brooklyn accent asked her.

Yes, baby.

Snack.

Brooklyn Spidey was so fucking cute. Very chatty. He had a lot to say about this _abuelita_ a few blocks over who he was keeping an eye on recently because she’d slipped down the stairs the other day and his own _abuelita_ did this thing where she told his mom that she didn’t fall or nothin’, but then when his mom left the room, she told him that she mighta had a bit of a stumble the day before and that was _dangerous_ , you know? So he was just waiting until that lady’s son came home from work so someone was there with her—no worries, he only did it once a week or so. Sometimes he went over to chat, but she wasn’t in a chatting mood today—

Saanvi _loved him_. He talked just like her younger cousins.

“Are you latino?” she asked him.

He went quiet and stared up at her.

“No,” he said flatly. “I’m a Spider.”

Bo was outraged.

Bo was outraged by the kid in general, since he had no respect for Bo’s assertions of authority. But Saanvi had spent her time before SI coordinating middle-school science fairs and curriculum development. She knew better than to demand authority from such bodies.

“Do you know the big Spidey?” Saanvi asked him.

Kiddo cocked his head.

“Which one?” he asked. “Tall-tall Spidey? Or Tall-Weird Spidey?”

Welp.

They all knew which one of those was their guy.

“Tall-Weird,” she said.

“I know him,” Kiddo said. “He’s weird.”

Yeah.

Yeah, he really, really was.

“Can I tell you a secret?” Saanvi asked.

The burger in Kiddo’s hands was completely forgotten, he was captivated.

Middle-schoolers, man.

So easy.

“Yes,” Kiddo said seriously.

Saanvi glanced around at her coworkers and stiffly raised an arm to gesture Kiddo in close enough that she could set her arm painfully on his shoulder and whisper in his ear, “He’s my friend.”

Kiddo lurched back.

“No way,” he said.

“Shh,” Saanvi hissed, pulling him back in. “I didn’t know this was his nightjob until like, last week when he saved all of us from this guy at our work. It’s how I got these.” She lifted her bandaged arms and winced. Kiddo’s eyes jerked slightly between them.

“Are you serious?” he asked after a minute. “You’re not having a mental break? You’re chill with no need for an ambulance or a shelter?”

Saanvi pulled back and rubbed her lips together.

“Peter’s our friend,” she said.

Kiddo’s mask eyes shot impossibly wide and in an instant, there were hands on her face.

“Don’t say that,” he warned. “No names. People will hear you.”

Holy shit.

It had worked.

“Sorry, sorry,” Saanvi said, gingerly picking the fingers away from her face. They left after barely a second. “I’m just.” She sighed. “We want to talk to him, but—like. He’s _weird_ , you know? Super weird. And he’s not told us a lot about himself. Barely anything actually.”

It was hard to tell if her now-empty hands were cold from defeat or the creeping night’s air.

“I feel like everything I thought I knew about him is just a front or something,” she admitted. “Like I don’t even know who he is anymore. And, like, it’s not fair for us to out him, but we’re just trying to figure out how to say thank you, you know? He’s still our friend. My friend. Even if he lives this whole life that we didn’t even know about. And we wanted to do something for him that would make a difference. Not just a bouquet of flowers or whatever.”

Kiddo’s mask was blank.

But he held her eye as he knelt down and set the remnants of the burger in its box on the curb. He stood back up.

“I don’t know Spidey very well,” he admitted out of nowhere. “He’s like this to us.” He held out a hand in front of him with his palm flat. “Wade and Red say that’s ‘cause he didn’t have anyone like us for a long time so he’s not used to having a team and sharing his real feelings and thoughts with people.”

Saanvi’s heart squeezed.

“He makes a lot of jokes, though,” Kiddo said. “And he teaches me things. But honestly? I know other Peters better than I know him. We’re working on that, but it’s kind of true right now.”

“What do you mean, ‘other Peters?’” Himani asked.

Kiddo’s mask swerved her way.

“Spidey secrets,” he said.

Right. Sure.

“Okay, well. Do you know someone who maybe does know him a little better?” Saanvi asked.

Kiddo perked up.

“Yeah,” he said. “He talks to BT more than me.”

BT?

“Blindspot.”

Who?

Kiddo snickered.

“He’s gonna hate that,” he said.

“How dare you call me just to spit in my face.”

Oh, this guy again.

“I’m hanging up, Bitsy.”

“Wait, wait, wait, don’t hang up,” Himani pleaded. “It’s us, the gals from before. At Deadpool’s place.”

There was a long pause.

“Your name is ‘apprentice?’” Himani tried.

“This is such bullshit,” the voice said. “I’m not ‘apprentice.’ I’m Blindspot. BLINDSPOT. For fuck’s sake, what’s a guy gotta do around here to—”

There was a pause.

“Nothing is happening,” Blindspot said to someone apparently in the same room as him.

“Red, make BT be nice to me,” Kiddo suddenly said. “He’s being super mean.”

There was another long silence.

“I can explain,” Blindspot said.

“He is a child,” Daredevil’s soft drawl warned somewhere away from the phone.

“It’s a _joke_ ,” Blindspot insisted. “You know. Siblings-siblings, bullying-bullying, hooray?”

More silence.

“Alright, so you wouldn’t get it, but it’s definitely a thing,” Blindspot said.

Saanvi wondered if he just lived in perpetual trouble with Daredevil. It sounded like he did.

“Be kind towards Bitsy,” Daredevil warned. “He’s younger than you and if Wade has decided to trust these people, then we will follow his example.”

Blindspot chewed on that.

“Okay, but consider: what if these people are secret life-ruiners out trying to ruin Spidey’s life? What if they’re _artists_ , DD?”

“Give it to me, then.”

There was a hiss.

“Give,” Daredevil repeated.

There was a tense silence this time followed by something that Saanvi couldn’t hear very well.

“Then work with Bitsy,” Daredevil said. “I’m not going to say it again.”

There was another beat followed by the sound of a door closing on the other side of the line. Kiddo snickered and said, “Straight from the devil’s mouth, BT. Whatcha gonna do?” 

“I will end you, little man,” Blindspot said into the phone. “I will fly across this country, come to your house and—”

“What part of ‘superhearing’ are you struggling with?” Daredevil’s distant voice demanded.

Oh, shit; holy shit.

“—and I will garden your front stoop,” Blindspot finished bitterly.

The door on his side closed again.

Kiddo giggled.

“I’ll be waiting,” he teased.

“Consider yourself no longer my teammate,” Blindspot said.

“What does Spidey need out of life right now?” Kiddo asked out of nowhere.

“I don’t trust these people,” Blindspot shot back just as seriously.

“Well, I’m gonna,” Kiddo insisted. “And Red said that if Wade does, then he does, so that’s three against one.”

“Yeah, no. I get that. I just don’t care,” Blindspot said.

“Red told you to work with me,” Kiddo said.

“DD’s my teacher, not my owner,” Blindspot shot back. “He doesn’t get to tell me who to trust.”

“No, but we’re a team and he told you to work with me,” Kiddo maintained. “So work with me. This is for Spidey. He’s your friend. You guys text all the time, don’t even act like you don’t.”

Blindspot chuffed.

“It’s exactly because he’s my friend that I’m not down,” he said.

“They know his name,” Kiddo argued.

“What does that matter?”

“I know them.”

He—he what?

“Oh, do you?” Blindspot asked. “Go on then. Lay it out for me.”

“I know them,” Kiddo repeated. “I’ve seen their names in Spidey’s phone.”

There was a long pause.

“Sam, Peter can’t be okay. I know you know he’s having a hard time,” Kiddo said quietly.

‘Sam’ had the voice and wariness of someone who cared a lot—a whole lot—about other people and especially his loved ones.

Saanvi could only imagine what kind of love you had to have for the world to pick yourself up one day and put yourself under the relentless gaze of the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.

He couldn’t be a bad guy.

This had to be a show.

“Please?” She asked quietly.

The phone remained silent. Himani’s hand found the back of Saanvi’s elbow. Her fingers were warm.

“Listen,” Leo interrupted. “Blindspot, right?”

The phone remained silent.

“Blindspot, the only difference between us and you is that we didn’t know until last week who Peter was,” Leo said. “But that doesn’t change anything, does it? If you were in our shoes, what would you do?”

Kiddo lifted his face up to Leo and then stepped away from the four of them with the phone still cradled in his hands.

“BT,” he said. “Spidey’s got more friends than we do.”

“Every person who knows is another target,” Blindspot said quietly. “They want to help, but they’ll just get hurt in the end.”

“I think they know that,” Kiddo said.

“I’m not putting another person I care about in danger,” Blindspot said.

“Then follow Red’s orders,” Kiddo said. “You trust him, don’t you? He’s decided to trust them.”

Blindspot didn’t have say anything to that. Saanvi’s heart beat faster in her chest. She tried to chase away the feeling of hope, but it wouldn’t go.

“This is how the world gets too much,” Blindspot finally said. “This is how people get hurt. The identities are secret for a reason, Bitsy. I feel like you Spiderpeople don’t understand that like we do. I’ll forward you the text chain, but that’s all I’m doing. Don’t ask me for anything else.”

“I understand,” Kiddo said. “Sorry for getting you in trouble. I really do understand, BT. I mean it. Thanks for helping.”

“You don’t,” Blindspot said. “You have no idea. But that’s okay, I guess. I’ve got work to do. Bye.”

He hung up.

Saanvi felt kind of bad.

“You don’t have to help us,” she said. “He doesn’t either. We can figure something else out.”

“No,” Kiddo said. “It’s okay. He’s just more like DD than the others of us are. They’re not super friendly until you get to know them.”

Ah. That was fair.

“ _Should_ we know him?” Leo asked. “Like, should we know Blindspot?”

Kiddo made his suit blink somehow.

“Maybe?” he said. “I dunno, I didn’t know him until DD introduced us. Spidey either. Eventually you might, though. Just like how one day, y’all are gonna know _me_ as Spiderman.”

Oh, aw.

Kiddo’s phone chirped.

“Ah,” he said. “There you go. Here, I like you. Can I have your number?”

Saanvi blinked in surprise.

“Oh, uh. Sure?” she said. “I can’t reach my phone right now, but here.”

She gave him her number and soon enough her phone buzzed in her pocket.

“Thank you,” she said.

“No, thank you,” Kiddo told her, sweeping down to pick up his now-cold burger. “Spidey deserves to know that the city loves him back, you know? I think he gets all wrapped up in the saving sometimes that he forgets that people do.”

Oh cool. So Saanvi was going to cry tonight, huh?

That was fine.

“Okay, I’ve gotta jet,” Kiddo said. “There’s work to do and it’s finally dark enough to get started. Good luck to y’all! Byeeeee—except you, Blue. You’re still a narc.”

**SM:** I’m so fckin tired man

 **BT:** Sup?

 **SM:** its always fires whys it always fire im not made for heat

 **BT:** I need context

 **SM:** I’m just tired

 **BT:** dude wait I just saw the news. holy fuck man are you okay?

 **SM:** yeah I’m okay just scratches you know how it is

 **BT:** broken bones?

 **SM:** thumb. It’ll be fine in a few days

 **BT:** I hate you

 **SM:** lol

 **BT:** you need a break

 **SM:** nah

 **BT:** come back out wesssssst

 **SM:** lol nah

 **BT:** why not?

 **SM:** work.

 **BT:** boo on you

 **SM:** TS gave me a few days off. told me not to show my face til things calmed down. I guess I did the thing

 **BT:** hulked out?

 **SM:** p much

 **SM:** its second nature you know? I see an alien, I hit the alien.

 **SM:** I got alien magnet fists

 **BT:** Teach wants alien magnet fists

 **SM:** no he wants kaiju magnet fists

 **BT:** he won’t tell me if he fought the alligator

 **SM:** me either. what is that about??

 **BT:** he probably lost and is embarrassed about it. Anyways you gonna sleep it off?

 **SM:** yeah slept like 12 hours already. Thumb’s a pain in the ass. I have no coffee ☹

 **BT:** I’ll send you coffee

 **SM:** no this is punishment

 **BT:** bruh

 **SM:** I did the thing. this is what I get

 **BT:** does carrying that cross make your back hurt?

 **SM:** god my back

 **BT:** oh whoops. What do you neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed?????

 **SM:** nothing my people already freaked out. Johnny came to point and laugh. I have no coffee. I’m right where I need to be

 **BT:** I’m telling Fogs that you have no coffee. He’ll buy you weird beans

 **SM:** tell him nothing

 **BT:** too late

 **BT:** Hey for real tho? What do you need?

 **SM:** a break. I’ve been going since May with barely a week off. Also need to stash a mask at work now because apparently I have to be prepared for a fire. And aliens. I need to plant an all-around go-bag at work actually. And to lay low? TS said I broke a door and there were witnesses uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh

 **BT:** I have a revolutionary idea

 **SM:** I can’t take any more time off I already fucked things up this year with the Harry thing

 **BT:** …therapist?

 **SM:** …okay yeah no you’re right

 **BT:** ❤❤❤❤

 **BT:** let me know if anything changes

 **SM:** will do thanks for talking to me I know I’m a pretty sad sack of shit right now

 **BT:** you’re not ❤ don’t talk that way about yourself ❤

 **SM:** right yeah sorry. I just

 **SM:** I just want to be better Sam.

 **BT:** have you ever thought that maybe you don’t have to be?

 **SM:** no.

 **BT:** is that a funny no or like a real no?

 **SM:** I’m not being funny I’m too tired and I possibly ruined my career

 **BT:** okay well maybe if you stopped trying so hard to be better it might happen on its own

 **SM:** we both know that’s a load of shit

 **BT:** I’m trying to believe its not

 **SM:** oh

 **SM:** fuck I’m sorry dude that wasn’t cool

 **BT:** its okay

 **SM:** its not

 **SM:** Maybe I shouldn’t talk to people right now.

 **BT:** I think you’re probably just feeling like shit.

 **SM:** correct

 **BT:** maybe you need to recenter yourself?

 **SM:** yeah. Yeah that and maybe put out a few job applications

 **BT:** I don’t think TS is mad at you rn. You kinda saved his ass.

 **SM:** no you’re right I’m paranoid. I’m gonna go figure out how to recenter ig. Thanks for talking to me. And for the record, I think you’ve probably got the right idea.

 **BT:** feel better ❤

 **SM:** ttyl

That…wasn’t what Saanvi thought it would be.

Her phone felt like nothing in her hands.

“Man, if Spiderman thinks he’s not worth shit, then what am I even doing?” Leo asked quietly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh y'all thought this would be a humorous story??  
> lol  
> IMAGINE  
> (There is some humor in coming parts I promise. I cannot not write humor, it is a curse.)


	3. rebar of dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mr. Stark closed his eyes and took in a deep, slow breath.  
> He made a decision. Saanvi saw it in the second breath he took and her stomach didn’t even had time to drop.  
> “He was almost fifteen,” he said. “When we met.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gettin a little heavy in here gettin a little jaw achy

It was with a heavier set of hearts that they set out to the Bronx to save Ave from herself.

Ave was nowhere to be found. Nowhere. Not at a park. Not at a basketball court. Not at a corner store. Bo started to get a little twitchy about that. The hand-wringing began as Himani called Ave’s phone and Leo popped in to a few bodegas asking if anyone had seen a blonde woman with a tiny southern twang meandering through life like she was possessed by a Victorian ghost after 150 years in purgatory.

She smelled like daisies.

Someone had seen her.

The store owner’s son told Leo very seriously (seriously concerned, more like) that this gal had bought a pocket knife from him and then asked him how to open it.

That was Ave.

There were no other urban Oklahomans in this neck of the woods.

Leo asked which way she’d gone when she’d left the store and got pointed North.

So they went north.

After an hour of searching, Ave still not answering her goddamn phone, and nerves getting stretched tighter and tighter, they found exactly who they were looking for.

Well.

Kinda.

This Spiderman was maybe half an inch shorter than Leo. He wore tightly laced boots and dark gloves and he turned towards them just as they they finished another intense round of ‘nose goes’ to figure out who was gonna clear their throat in his direction.

“Hello,” the Spiderman said pleasantly.

He was so tall.

God, what was it like?

Saanvi would put good money on him holding onto the overhead rails when he rode the train. She bet that when he held paperwork over his head, his coworkers gave up and walked away spitting.

Or maybe that was just their lab.

No, that was probably just their lab.

Sorry, Leo.

“He’s hot,” Himani whimpered miserably into Saanvi’s neck.

“He’s present,” Saanvi muttered out of the corner of her mouth.

“ _I know_ ,” Himani said.

The Spiderman was definitely smiling. He couldn’t not be smiling.

“Did you need saving?” he asked.

“You can save me _anytime_ ,” Himani sobbed.

‘Nose-goes’ had never been Himani’s strongest sport.

“Get it together,” Bo snapped at her.

“I can’t,” Himani said. “Look at him.”

“He’s still present,” Saanvi reminded her.

“I bet you’re beautiful,” Himani told the Spiderman from the pit of her heart. She slapped a hand onto her tits so he knew where it was coming from. Saanvi wondered if maybe it was a good thing they’d lost Ave. She would only have made everything worse.

“You’re pretty cute yourself,” the Spiderman said with a light Bronx accent.

Himani screamed into her hands.

Leo covered his face. Saanvi stared straight up into the sky.

They should have known this would happen.

“Leo, please be Nose,” Bo said. “Or else I’m gonna be Nose and we all saw how well that went earlier.”

“NO,” Himani snapped. “Back the fuck up. All of you. You especially, Narc. Go on. BACK.” She spun around and beamed winningly up to the Spiderman again.

“Hi,” she said. “You’re gorgeous. Seeing your face would make me cry. Don’t take that thing off ever. We lost our friend.”

The Spiderman stiffened.

“When?” he asked.

“Oh, you know, like, an hour ago. It’s fine, she’s sturdy, we just need a teeny, itty, bitty bit of help finding her before she stabs herself in a dark alley,” Himani said.

The Spiderman’s mask eyes went huge.

Saanvi cleared her throat.

“She’s not suicidal,” she said. “She’s just got 6 braincells and 5 of them are used only for science.”

The wide white eyes blinked once.

“Oh,” the Spiderman said. “What—uh—actually, can I just? Is she, uh—”

Oh, no.

“’Bout yay tall?” The Spiderman asked, holding a hand out stiffly at exactly Ave’s height.

No, no. Ave, no.

“Blonde?”

Ave. Avery _, what have you done?_

“Kinda—”

“That’s her,” Himani said with a miserable hand out in front of her to stop this poor man before he went any further.

The Spiderman winced and Saanvi felt the zing of it in her jaw.

“I see,” he said.

Bo moaned into their hands.

“Which way did she go?” they asked. “And I apologize for whatever she did.”

“ _We_ apologize,” Leo corrected.

The Spiderman lifted his face to him as though he hadn’t noticed him there which was wild because Leo’s current shirt had dancing cacti on it and he was one more inch of beige cardigan away from having a whole sheep on his person.

“No,” the Spiderman said, “I’m the one who should be apologizing.”

Bless him.

No, seriously.

Bless this Spidey.

He’d walked Ave to a rehab with her knife in hand. 

Bo cradled their face in their hands while Leo rubbed their shoulders soothingly.

“I’m so fuckin’ sorry,” The Spiderman said. “I cannot tell you how sorry—she was—I thought she was high. She didn’t stop me. I swear I asked her.”

No.

No, that—

That wasn’t his fault. It was a fairly easy mistake to make with a sleep-deprived Ave lolling around town. They should have glued her to Bo. They should always glue her to Bo. It was safer for everyone when she was glued to Bo.

“I’ll go get her, the place isn’t far,” The Spiderman said. “Wait right there. I’ll be right back.”

They watched as he jogged off out of sight down the street and Himani let her head fall back with her face skyward.

“Booooo,” she said.

“Just kill me now,” Bo said.

“Bo, your not-girlfriend is ruining the proposal I planned just now,” Himani said.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Bo sobbed.

It was the only thing they had left in them to say.

Ave perked up to see all of them, arm in arm with Mr. Tall Spidey himself.

“Eeeeeey, guys!! Guess what? I lost the train,” Ave greeted them with. “Got a knife though—and hey look!! I found Spiderguy.”

Ave.

Ave, _no_.

“His name’s S3,” Ave said patting the tall Spidey on the shoulder. “And he knows our man; our guy—what’d you call him again, Three?”

S3 was the most patient man in the universe.

“Spidey,” he said.

“That’s the one,” Ave said with a snap. “Pretty good, huh?”

Ave was only good for research. Saanvi was plastering this across the new office’s announcement board. They’d all known it before, but this proved it more than any other instance at SI ever had.

“I can’t say how sorry I am about her,” Bo told S3.

“No, no. It was my mistake,” S3 said kindly. “Actually, I’ll be honest, it wasn’t me who found her first. Little Spidey’s the one who told me. She said ‘there’s a—uh, well she said ‘a blonde bitch,’ but that’s kinda rude so uh—a _girl_ wandering around talking to herself in alleys, I dunno how to deal with it.’ So I came running and made some assumptions. Sorry about that.”

…amazing.

Himani found it in herself to give up her hopes and dreams of proposing to S3 that night and asked if Little Spidey was still around.

“You want her?” S3 asked.

Yes, friend. Unfortunately, they probably did.

“Are you guys in trouble?” S3 asked.

“We sure are, bud,” Ave said with fingerguns, “With a capital ‘T’ and that rhymes with ‘P’ and that stands for ‘pool.’”

S3 stared.

“This isn’t a dream,” S3 said.

Himani turned around and screamed into her hands again.

It took a little work getting S3 to call Little Spidey. Mostly because they had to do what they’d done with Kiddo, which was tip-toe around the fact that they knew the OG Spidey’s name and S3 did not get what the fuck the secret was about until Leo threw up his hands and said, ‘So Peter’s our coworker’ and then it was like an alarm went off in S3’s head and he full-body tackled Leo.

So that was fun.

The rest of them shorties were grateful that it had been Leo and not them.

Tall people, man.

“You don’t—NO names, NONE,” S3 swore. “Never names. Oh my god.”

“Man, I _get it_ ,” Leo said. “Hands off the merchandise. Christ. Are you all like this?”

S3 blinked at him. Then lurched back.

“I,” he said. “I? I think I need backup?”

Little Spidey was the pink one and she was shorter than Himani.

Repeat: she was short than _Himani_.

The world was a vast and unknowable place.

“You assaulted a civilian,” Little Spidey deadpanned.

“Did not assault,” S3 said. “Was provoked.”

Little Spidey stared up at him with an unreadable face.

“Stop it,” S3 said. “They started it.”

Little Spidey continued to dig her eyes into his soul. S3 put up his arms as a shield.

“ _Stop it_ ,” he said. “The point is the blonde lady wasn’t high.”

“Bullshit,” Little Spidey said.

“Hi, I’m not high,” Ave offered from where Himani had tied her to Bo with a giant rubberband from her bag.

“Hi, Not High, get a fuckin’ job,” Little Spidey snapped.

S3 slapped a hand over his face and Saanvi realized that he was on the same team that she was: out here with a load of barely human people, pretending to be calm, collected, and sane.

If her fingers were more functional, she would have given him a fist bump in solidarity.

S3 cleared his throat.

“Little Spidey,” he introduced, “Spidey’s coworkers.” 

Another pause.

“What, for real?” Little Spidey asked.

S3 nodded.

“Why?”

Saanvi prepared herself to explain for the umpteenth-time, but instead a soft noise sounded out above them all and they all looked up to red soles kicking overhead. Kiddo was barely an outline against the night sky.

He must have followed them all from Brooklyn to see what they would do with that text chain.

Huh.

Maybe he wasn’t so trusting after all.

“They’re legit.” Kiddo said down at the other two. “And Spidey’s depressed.”

“Get fucked,” Little Spidey told him.

“No, you,” Kiddo said back.

“Children,” S3 warned. “There are people here.”

“She started it,” Kiddo said, pointing.

“I’m literally just tryin’ to live my life right now,” Little Spidey said.

S3 sighed and dragged hands down his face.

“This can’t be happening,” he said to himself. “The world is a cesspit and I am on fire…whatever. Bitsy, get down here. Explain.”

They were like, a really cool team. Saanvi was awed on Peter’s behalf. Kiddo—Bitsy, everyone actually called him—explained the whole thing more or less accurately and then said that Blindspot had called him back and said that he regretted talking to them, but he was also legitimately worried.

“Oof. BT’s worried?” Little Spidey asked. “The whole baby must be in the dumpster.”

The other two Spidermen stared at her.

“Baby? Bathwater? No?” she asked.

“I see where you are coming from and I appreciate you, but no,” S3 said. “This is a problem. We should have noticed it sooner. Spidey’s been doing five nights a week for the last few months. He must not be sleeping again.”

What?

S3 looked back Saanvi’s way.

“He doesn’t sleep sometimes,” he said simply. “Goes straight from the mask to work. Told me he sleeps on his lunch breaks. I think he does it when the uh, thing that we apparently _aren’t_ calling ‘PTSD’ gets bad.”

“I dunno what you’re talking about, the man-spider is a perfectly healthy and functional human being,” Little Spidey deadpanned.

“Same,” Bitsy said.

Little Spidey gave him a scathing look.

How those masks were so expressive was a mystery.

But more importantly: Peter, _no_.

“How—how do we make him sleep then?” Saanvi asked. She wanted so badly to wring her hands but everything hurt. God it hurt. Worse now than it did in the morning.

The other Spideys considered this.

“I don’t know about you guys since you’re pretty out of this loop. But maybe double shifts for us?” S3 tried. “Anyone want to take two nights of Queens and Midtown?”

Woah, wait. No, no. Little Spidey sounded young and Bitsy even younger. They couldn’t be doing double shifts for a week, surely?

S3’s mask contorted in confusion.

“I mean, I work a fulltime job,” he said, “But I guess I can add a fourth day?”

Dude, what?

No, just—no.

“Maybe Dave can do it?” Little Spidey asked. “He’d probably be down to expand a few blocks into Midtown?”

Dave? Who was Dave?

“That’s not very devilish of him, though,” Bitsy pointed out. “He doesn’t care about Midtown. He told me himself. Even if he did do it, he wouldn’t do it long term and he’s already doing weekends and 2 week days.”

“True,” S3 said with a huff.

“If I drop AcaDec I can do more,” Bitsy said. “It’s only summer practice. No one will mind.”

“No, you like AcaDec,” S3 said. “Damn. We could really use Blindspot and Kate, huh?”

“Or Miss America,” Little Spidey interjected. “Just sayin’.”

“You’re gross,” Bitsy said.

“You’re annoying,” Little Spidey shot back.

“Maybe we could get Cap to flip to vigilantism?” S3 said, apparently herding the other two back on track. “He’s basically retired.”

“Sarge already tried,” Bitsy said. “But he says Cap’s a creature of the day.”

“Come _on_ , Cap, live a little,” Little Spidey sighed.

“He’s tryin’, man,” Bitsy said.

“He can try harder.”

“He’s like 120.”

“What do I care how old he is?” Little Spidey asked. “He’s done his time in the limelight. It’s time to go dark like the rest of us.”

“Girl, we cannot harass Captain America into vigilantism if he doesn’t want to go,” S3 said. “It would be easier to flip the Hulk.”

“Okay? So let’s flip the Hulk,” Little Spidey said.

This conversation was unlike anything Saanvi ever imagined she’d be privy to and while she appreciated it, it was kind of a step above what she thought was possible to institute right then.

She was about to point that out when Bitsy knocked a fist into his palm and said, “I got it.”

All eyes went to him.

“Okay, you’re not gonna like it. Let’s start with that,” he said.

“I hate it,” Little Spidey said immediately.

“Good, you don’t matter,” Bitsy told her. “Anyways, so here’s the thing. Our Spidey is a special Spidey ‘cause he’s got the heart-face _and_ the science job. But he can’t be the only heart-face, science-job Spidey, right? So we—”

“I don’t know what you’re even saying,” Little Spidey said. “What the fuck is ‘heart-face’?”

“ _You_ have a heart-face,” Bitsy said nastily.

“I’ll show you a heart-face.”

“Okay, I hate this, too,” S3 announced. “New plan: we ask Foggy if we can borrow Red for two weeks to give Spidey a break.”

“Seconded,” Little Spidey said.

“No, guys, listen,” Bitsy said. “Who knows a Peter better than a Peter. No one! So we just borrow a Peter.”

Saanvi no longer knew what was happening.

“We can’t just borrow a Peter. _Our_ Peter still needs to go to work,” S3 said.

“That’s fine, we’ll just borrow one to be Spidey, then,” Bitsy said. “Blondie would do it. Or B. B’s like, abandoned his Bitsy to fight all his battles right now so he’s probably free most nights. And he likes our guy, so why not?” 

“B’s so tall, though,” S3 said. “It’ll be obvious that it’s not Spidey.”

“It won’t, people are stupid,” Little Spidey said without missing a beat. “Fine, whatever. Bitsy go ask B. If he says yes, great. If he says no, then I think we may need to have IronDude stage another intervention with Spidey and remind him that it’s not his job to save the world.”

“ _We_ could stage an intervention?” S3 pointed out.

“Yeah, but we don’t actually believe it’s not our job to save the world,” Little Spidey told him scathingly. “It has to come from one of the old guys who Spidey listens to.”

“Okay, so Wade,” S3 said.

“Wade’s a contract killer. Spidey takes everything he says with like, a mountain of salt,” Little Spidey said.

“Okay so Red,” S3 said.

“Red’s in a face-smashing mood right now,” Bitsy said. “I don’t think he’s gonna be processing tender emotions until he gets that out of his system.”

“Well, fuck,” S3 sighed. “Alright, fine. Ask B. But not for the replacement gig, tell him that he is an old guy who Spidey respects and to come and talk with him about overworking again. If that doesn’t work, we’ll do IronDude. If that doesn’t work then we’ll ask May.”

“Now _that’s_ a plan,” Little Spidey said. “This is why we keep you around Three-P-O.”

Saanvi could no longer see the forest for the trees. Or maybe the web for the silk?

Metaphors were hard.

“I—we—can we do anything to help?” she asked.

Three sets of white eyes fell upon her.

They then all focused on each other, then snapped back to the rest of them.

The Spiders told the rest of them that they needed 12 to 24 hours to put things in order so the best that the rest of them could do at the moment was come together and think of something, in Little Spidey’s words, ‘soft as fuck’ to do for Peter.

Saanvi was glad for the direction, and if she was honest, she was glad that these guys had strong-armed control of the mission away from her. But unfortunately, that as it was, they hadn’t actually gathered any new information from that team to help them figure out what ‘soft as fuck’ thing to do to help bring Peter back from whatever edge he was standing on.

“Maybe we should get him a ‘beloved mutant’ mug,” Bo suggested as they made their way back to the train.

“Or just some coffee,” Himani sighed.

“Gift basket?” Leo offered.

“Sounds like a consolation prize,” Himani said. “Maybe something to make him purr?”

“I’m sorry what the fuck?” Bo asked.

“It’s a thing, apparently,” Himani said.

“Sick,” Ave said.

No, not sick.

Saanvi was going to have to sleep on this. After some painkillers. Ideas after sleep after painkillers. In that order.

She flew up at three in the morning with the smell of smoke in her nostrils and the memory of Peter’s office door surrounded by flames in her head.

She couldn’t sleep. She stayed up until six before scrambling out of bed and putting herself through an excruciating shower and then, even though she wasn’t due into work that day due to her injuries, she grabbed her ID card out of the key bowl and set out to catch the train.

The whole lab was burnt.

The line of lab manager offices included. She had to have a security guard with her to even go close to them.

She skipped hers and went straight to Peter’s.

It was a mess. His plants were scorched, but they seemed to have saved a lot of the room, actually.

What they hadn’t saved was Peter’s window sill. The copper bowl he’d kept on it was still there, but the framed portrait that had been placed behind it was blackened. Burnt.

She picked it up and part of the wooden frame fell to pieces in her hand. The cracked, black glass didn’t clear. She had to pry it off carefully and the whole thing shattered into her lap. The piece of paper inside was charred.

It had once been an image of Peter’s uncle. The copper bowl had been a shrine to him.

When Peter realized what had happened to it, he would be devastated.

Saanvi couldn’t let that happen.

She took the picture and the bowl and all the things that were left in it and she left the office.

She had Himani look at it.

Himani’s Master’s degree had been in conservatory work for museums. She was working at SI on making organic, long-lasting glue that could be used on different materials for patching. She knew a thing or two about paper and her face when she looked at the photo was not heartening.

“We can do a little for the marks,” she said, referring to the charred marks eating into Peter’s Uncle’s face, “But we can’t fill the holes, they’re too big.”

HNG.

Right.

That was not good, seeing as Peter wouldn’t remember his uncle with what looked like bullet holes in his forehead.

Unless he did? He’d never said how his uncle had died…

HAHAHA.

Hell no. Not going there.

Focus, Malik. Work in front of you. 24 hours. Time’s a tickin’.

“What do we do then?” she asked. “I cleaned the bowl, it’s fine. The things inside it were a little cracked, but they’ll survive. This is the important thing.”

Himani lifted an eyebrow at her.

“There are two ways to go about this,” she said. “One? Reframe this one and say we did our best.”

“And two?” Saanvi asked her.

Himani pursed her lips and rolled her eyes innocently away from her.

“Well,” she said. “Two requires an eensy, weensy, teeny, tiny bit of strong-arming.”

Oh.

Saanvi wasn’t good at that.

“No, but I am,” Himani said. “And more importantly: Bo is.”

“You put us in _danger_ ,” Bo snarled at Mr. Stark in his office with its towering, bright window mere hours later. “By putting us _and our staff_ in the same room, nearly DAILY, with a known vigilante. KNOWINGLY. You did that KNOWINGLY.”

Mr. Stark could not be paler.

Saanvi had never seen him sweat like this. Himani’s fingers tightened around the inside of her elbow. Ave crossed her legs the other way and shook her head sadly.

“I’m not sure I quite understand—” he started.

“And now you have the fucking gall to lie to us about it?” Bo snapped. “How dare you. If I had a lick of sense in my body, I would quit this company right here right now, walk my ass across the street to _The Bugle_ and tell them that Anthony ‘Tony’ Stark not only hired Spiderman for whatever secret-secret Avengers bullshit y’all have going on, but is forcing him to produce research for Stark Industries. How many conferences has Parker attended in this company’s name, huh? How much personal info was he privy to? He has all our staff’s home addresses and their phone numbers _and_ their emails. I bet that’ll look real good to our board members in the morning paper, won’t it?”

“Bo,” Mr. Stark said. “I think we need to calm—”

“CALM DOWN?” Bo snarled. “Are you—is it because I have a uterus?”

“No,” Mr. Stark said immediately.

“Are you calling me hysterical?” Bo demanded.

“Bo, I’m not doing that, we both know I’m not doing that—”

“I nearly suffocated last week because of this GODDAMN Company.”

So this was going well.

Saanvi was glad that it was.

She hated shouting. Not having to shout was the best thing in her book and while not having to listen to shouting was the next best thing, there was a goal in sight here and each second of shouting brought them closer to it.

“Let me talk to him,” Bo said. “You let me talk to that fucker and give him a piece of my mind. Spiderman—who even _cares_?”

“Peter would never hurt anyone,” Mr. Stark said firmly. “I—I know that, Bo. I watched him grow up and there were so many chances that he could have taken, and he didn’t, okay? He didn’t, he wouldn’t, and he won’t. So if you’re going to be angry, be angry with me and not with him. He didn’t do anything that I haven’t told him to do.”

“What, so you groomed him?” Bo said. “And that’s what makes this okay?”

“No. No, that’s not what I meant,” Mr. Stark said.

“No, you didn’t groom him then?” Bo demanded.

“What? No, Bo there was no grooming. Peter’s—when he was younger, we crossed paths and he had talent so I took him on—he was going to get himself killed out there and he was smart so I just figured—” Mr. Stark tried to explain.

“’Hey, let me snap this sixteen, seventeen year-old kid up off the street and make him work for me and my company instead of telling him to, I dunno, Mr. Stark, _not_ break the law?” Bo shot back at him.

Mr. Stark closed his eyes and took in a deep, slow breath.

He made a decision. Saanvi saw it in the second breath he took and her stomach didn’t even had time to drop.

“He was almost fifteen,” he said. “When we met.”

The room suddenly felt like ice.

Even Bo seemed to lose some of their fury.

“Fourteen?” they asked quietly, “You let a fourteen year-old kid go out and do that to themself?”

Mr. Stark tipped his head down and leaned forward so that his elbows hit the desk.

“I did,” he said seriously. “And I’m not proud of it. And I’ve tried to make things right since then since Peter’s—”

He swallowed.

“Well, since I think we all know that Peter’s not your average guy,” he said.

“Mr. Stark,” Bo interrupted, far more gently this time. “Peter’s got PTSD. He tries to punch anyone who brushes against him. He hits the floor when there’s a bang and he--he comes into his office on the weekends to have panic attacks. I’ve seen him; I never said anything obviously, it’s never been my business but he just? He just. Goes blank. And then he closes the door and he doesn’t leave for hours and if you listen he’s always…crying? And you knew—you’ve _known._ ”

No.

No, Bo.

Why didn't you say anything?

It had nearly been two years now, and Peter was coming in on the weekends just to cry? Just for someplace to feel safe and to? Cry?

Did he sit at his desk when he did it? Or did he go under it? Or did he lay down on the floor or did he squeeze his wrist like he did sometimes until he left bruises on it, and then try to pull down his sleeve to cover them up?

Why had none of them ever said anything?

Why was all of this hitting only now? Only after they’d learned that Peter was supposed to be more than human; he was Spiderman.

The one, the only, the amazing Spiderman.

“How could you do that to him?” Bo asked for all of them.

Mr. Stark took another breath, a shuddering one this time.

“It was wrong,” he admitted. “And it was selfish. I thought that I could help him become something better than me—better than Ironman. I thought that I’d die before leaving a legacy, and that I could make up for that if I could just help this one kid be better than anyone else--but he didn’t need the help, it turned out. And all I did was put pressure on him and make him think that somehow, his life wasn’t as important as the greater good. And I regret that, guys. I really do. And he knows that I regret that. But what’s done is done and this is something that we both know he’s going to struggle with for the rest of his life—god willing he stays alive long enough to live it.”

The tears that had been wanting to fall for nearly a week now finally came.

And Saanvi found that they fell silently. No hitching or wailing.

Just the thought of Peter’s tiny suit in those online photos with Deadpool, joking in those moments, but walking into Stark Industries in the next ones.

He would have come upstairs and sat down at one of the intern benches to kick his feet off a stool too tall for him, and he would have looked up at someone calling his name with that classic thousand-watt Peter-smile and the weight of the whole city bearing down on his slim shoulders.

But he was shuddering now.

Shaking.

Coming into the office to hide all the cracks from the face in his own bathroom mirror.

And when he saw them—her and Leo and Himani and Bo and Avery and Chao and Wallace and Gonzales and Lovett and Bautista and Lawrence— _all of them_ \--he still smiled.

Her hands wanted that picture of Peter’s uncle now. Hugging it would feel like hugging him.

Even if he wasn’t there.

Bo sniffed quietly.

“His uncle’s picture got burnt in the fire,” they said quietly.

Mr. Stark sighed.

“Of course it did,” he groaned into a palm. “Of course it fuckin’ did.”

Bo swallowed.

“What do we do?” they asked.

Mr. Stark took his hand off his forehead.


	4. your house is built of Legos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hi,” Johnny Storm said in a voice exactly like the one Saanvi had heard on the news. “Can I help you?”

May Parker lived in Forest Hills. Right there--she’d been so close to Saanvi’s own apartment this whole time.

She was everything and nothing that Saanvi had ever expected her to be. A tiny, stick-thin woman with huge glasses and long brown hair that fell in waves over her shoulders and down her back. She was a nurse, Mr. Stark said. The man in Peter’s picture was her husband.

Mr. Stark said that the second time he’d ever spoken to Mrs. Parker, she’d told him without flinching that if he got the last bit of her remaining family killed, then her own death would be on his conscious.

Allegedly, she was intense as fuck.

But you wouldn’t have known that from looking at her magnified eyes smiling at them through their heavy lenses.

She took the picture Saanvi placed in her hands with bent eyebrows and then tsked.

“Benjamin, you’ve never looked so sorry,” she scolded him. “It’s a good thing we’ve got your file.”

Peter’s uncle’s family shrine was beautiful and so was Peter’s childhood home. It was filled with knick-knacks and patterned cloth and pillows and a rainbow of different woods and grains. Light poured in from the windows onto the polished stones gleaming on their sills.

Mrs. Parker told them all to take off their shoes by the door and to make themselves at home. She had lemonade somewhere—iced tea in the fridge.

She didn’t react to the idea that all of the people moving into her living room knew her nephew was an infamous vigilante. She didn’t even mention it, even though Mr. Stark had to have told her what they all knew when he called her about the picture.

One of Peter’s coats was hanging on a hook by the kitchen doorway. It hung next to a little table stacked high with a pile of mail that was held in place by a cup filled with an assortment of mismatching pens in it.

Right next to the coat was a smattering of very familiar post-it notes that said things like ‘Karla called—2nd Rx didn’t go thru’ and ‘you don’t like VegRev. Stop buying things from VegRev.’

Saanvi’s chest felt like a ball of twine, losing string as it rolled across a hardwood floor.

“Let me see,” Mrs. Parker said, once everyone had been handed a mug or a glass of some kind with liquid in it. She flicked through her photos on her laptop.

“Ah,” she said, “There we go. Here’s the one we keep of Ben.”

The image Peter had of his uncle was pretty formal. He looked very academic with his glasses and his neat beard and light blue collar. But he’d been an electrician. Just a hard-working guy.

May Parker’s pictures of him showed more of that side of him. She showed them off with pride. Her wedding pictures with her husband made her smile widest, but she flipped through them pretty fast.

“This was right after Peter came to live with us,” she said, giggling. “Look how suspicious he was of me. He only wanted Ben to hold him.”

And sure enough, the tiny Peter in the picture on the screen had a face exactly the shape of a moon. He must have been three years old—maybe four, generously, with a mop of dark, usually wild hair, coerced into a semblance of order. He had two and a half fingers buried in Ben Parker’s neatly ironed shirt and looked seconds away from whining for him, while Mr. Parker wrapped an arm around his wife and attempted to get his nephew to look at the camera.

“He died when Peter was 14,” May said sadly. “We were married for 16 years.”

That wasn’t fair.

It just—it wasn’t fair. 

“What happened to him?” Leo asked softly. “If it’s not too much to ask?”

May turned the laptop back towards herself and held its sides with a wry smile.

“He was murdered,” she said.

Himani covered her mouth. Bo flinched and looked away.

“Only a few blocks away from here,” May said. “He went out looking for Pete one night. Got stabbed. Died…right there. Peter found him, though. He was with him when he passed. So, you know. That comforts me. He didn’t die alone. His last words were to his child. I told him I loved him before he left home. We did everything right.”

We did everything right, she said.

My husband was murdered and my adopted son held him as he died, she said.

Peter had become a vigilante at fourteen years old.

Funny how all those things lined up when you had the final piece of the puzzle in between your fingers.

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Parker, we didn’t know,” Saanvi whispered.

“It’s okay, I know Peter doesn’t talk about it,” May said. “It upsets him too much. We did therapy and grief counseling, but he’s always got Ben on his mind, you know. He doesn’t leave mine, of course, but it’s always been different for Peter. Ben told him this thing--this motto that he always believed in, and Peter’s made that his whole life ever since he passed.”

“What motto?” Himani asked.

May Parker looked up from the memory of her family on the laptop screen.

“With great power comes great responsibility,” she recited like it was embroidered across her very heart in shining brass thread.

Saanvi could almost see it.

Just like she could imagine the words stamped in ink across Peter’s shoulder blades, furling out on each side like wings.

May had the slightest smile on her face when they all managed to collect themselves and meet her eye again.

“One day he’ll learn that power choosing you doesn’t mean that you have to shoulder that burden all on your own,” she said. “Thank you for helping him. Here’s the file. We always frame Ben in red wood.”

Yes, ma’am.

Peter lived not even twenty minutes from his aunt’s place. This whole time, he’d been so close to Saanvi. They’d both been so close to Saanvi.

It was surreal.

His door said 442 on it and it was blue.

Leo took in a deep breath and knocked.

Himani anxiously shuffled the Walgreens bag in her arms around. In it was the red frame they’d found at the thrift store across the street from the place.

It was a little old, but a mad dash to the hardware store just two blocks over and some back-alley sanding and waxing made it gleam like the stones in May Parker’s window.

Benjamin Parker’s eyes seemed a little more gentle in the picture that the guy behind the photo counter had handed to them, and Saanvi couldn’t help but think that May had given them the file for the picture taken in the split-second after the original one—the one that caught Mr. Parker just as he had started to relax.

She couldn’t hold onto that thought for too long, however, because the apartment door opened, and she looked up into the eyes of Johnny Fucking Storm.

Himani dropped the bag and Saanvi caught out of reflex and her arms burned with the movement.

Johnny Storm’s blonde hair and blue eyes were iconic.

Johnny Storm’s gentle eyebrows and the toned abs shadowing his shirt were less so.

Was it strictly necessary to wear underarmor at this time of day?

Was it??

“Hi,” Johnny Storm said in a voice exactly like the one Saanvi had heard on the news. “Can I help you?”

Peter Peter Peter

_Peter Peter PETER_

Johnny kept on smiling pleasantly through their stunned silence. He waited.

He must have been used to it.

“P-Peter?” Himani tried.

Johnny Storm’s eyes shot wide.

“Oh, sure,” he said. “Let me get ‘im. Hey, Pete?,” he called over his shoulder, “Folks at the door.”

“I don’t wan’ any,” Peter’s muffled voice called back from a ways away.

Johnny Storm turned back to them apologetically.

“He don’t wan’ any,” he said solemnly.

Bo recovered first.

“Tell him it’s nonnegotiable,” they said.

“Oh, I like your style,” Johnny Storm hummed. “Just one second, I’ve got this.”

He closed the door to Peter’s apartment and left the rest of them to clutch at their chests and faces.

“Johnny Storm,” Himani said. “That’s Johnny Storm. Oh my god. His tits.”

“Himani,” Bo hissed.

“They’re _right there_ , Beaufort Junior, my sightline is out of my control,” Himani snapped back.

“Imagine if you could just call up your pal Johnny Storm, the Human Torch,” Leo said tonelessly.

“He’s not fiery,” Ave said in disappointment.

Saanvi stared at her.

“You thought he’d answer the door in full torch-mode?” she asked.

Ave blinked once. Then twice.

“Well—”

“Don’t answer that,” Saanvi said.

A commotion interrupted them followed by the dulcet tones of Peter barking “for fuck’s sake, Jonathan, put a real shirt on, you’re gonna break all my goddamn mirrors.’

Jonathan.

Peter called Johnny Storm ‘Jonathan.’

Saanvi had thought she was ready for this, but her fingers felt sweaty now.

Peter opened the door in a loose gray tank top and black tracksuit bottoms that barely fit his tights.

He was pale as hell.

Saanvi had never seen this many of his tattoos. She’d thought they ended with his arms, but they didn’t. Peaking out from the wide arms of his shirt was what looked like rows upon rows of tiny newspaper text trailing down his back.

"Hey, uh, guys," Peter said casually. “Fancy meeting you in this neck of the woods. At my door. In my complex. You come here often?”

Ave lit up. Leo grabbed her arm.

“Can we come in, Peter?” he asked.

Peter stared.

Some of those tattoos, Saanvi realized, weren’t tattoos.

They were scars.

Peter showed more of them trailing down his ribs when he turned back to beg Johnny Storm for advice with his face.

Johnny shrugged.

“I think the ship’s already set sail,” he said. “Might as well steer it before it steers itself.”

Peter turned back slowly, miserably.

He didn’t want this. He’d never wanted this.

His shoulders sagged.

“Come in,” he said.

Peter’s apartment looked a little like his office and very much like his aunt’s house with far more plants crammed in the windows. It did not appear to be the sentient pagan alter that it was rumored to be at Stark Industries.

There was not a single visible animal bone on any surface. Not one.

Nor was there any trace of anything spidery. There were no decals. No stickers. No mugs. Nothing.

It was just a home.

Windchimes on the inside. A billion pillows overflowing from the couch. Light-colored flooring.

Just a home.

“I’m sorry, all I’ve got is tea right now,” Peter nattered on, the spitting image of his aunt just hours earlier. “I might’ve been uh, wallowing a bit, so coffee’s out; oh, sorry, I’ve got OJ?”

No, friend.

It was okay.

“I’m glad you’re all okay,” Peter carried on, “Sorry I didn’t pick up the phone, it’s been a weird couple of days, and I thought we could all use some time to—”

“Peter,” Himani said.

Peter shut up immediately at the counter where he was pulling down mugs from a cabinet with shaky hands. Saanvi watched his shoulders rise and fall as he clutched at the one in his hands.

“Right,” he said.

“It’s okay,” Leo said.

Peter didn’t turn around.

“Hey Webs,” Johnny said. “Breathe.”

Peter’s shoulders rose again with a purposeful intake of air.

“Atta boy,” Johnny said, unfolding himself from the corner of the couch. “Keep doing that. You’re good, bud.”

Peter grabbed at the back of his neck and rubbed hard. He still didn’t turn around. Didn’t say anything.

Saanvi wanted to touch his arm.

She didn’t want him to be standing there alone, even if he was standing next to Johnny Storm. She wanted—she needed—

She—

“Peter,” she said with a cracking voice, “You’re such a good friend.”

And finally, finally, Peter’s walls came tumbling down.

It was horrible— _horrible—_ to watch someone you care about just start crying.

It was already hideous and it was only made worse somehow, by Johnny Storm swooping in and wrapping Peter up in his arms and making soothing sounds.

It was like Saanvi and the others weren’t good enough in this moment. They weren’t who Peter needed. Their presence was hurting him.

Hideous.

Awful.

Horrendous.

They never should have come.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Johnny crooned. “None of this. We already did this. Come on, pal. We did this.”

What did that mean?

Johnny looked over his shoulder with suddenly icy eyes.

“You think Stark can keep a secret?” he asked. “You think this is the kind of thing we keep secrets about?”

Oh.

Right.

Mr. Stark must have called the second they left his office. Of course he had. He’d specifically said that he and Peter were trying to work their relationship into something more functional.

He’d drawn his lines of loyalty ages ago.

Saanvi got it.

But that meant that Peter had known what was about to happen for hours now, and he was just waiting. Tying himself into knots. Thinking of every possible way that this discussion could go.

Thinking of how his life was going to change.

He was probably thinking about finding a new job. A new apartment. Maybe dropping out of civilian view for a while, in case things went south faster and messier than intended.

He’d probably been rearranging his life and everything he’d worked for and every part of his family—reconfiguring them into map after map of what his new existence would have to look like.

He didn’t have to do that.

He never would have had to do that.

“Hey,” Leo said. “It’s not like that, though. Come on, Pete, you know us. It’s nothing like that.”

Did he, Leo?

Did he know them?

Did Spiderman know all the people he’d saved or those who wanted him dead or, if nothing else, ruined the way that he ruined them?

There was no knowing.

But there was showing.

Saanvi took the paper bag from Himani.

“Peter,” She said. “Nothing’s changed. You’re still our friend, and we never expected anything more or less of you and even this doesn’t change that. You don’t have to say anything; we won’t won’t say anything either. For real. We promise. Here’s proof. Take it.”

Johnny cocked his head at her. She offered the bag to him since Peter didn’t seem to be in a place where he could take it.

Johnny read her up through her shaking arms and then down to the tips of her sneakers. He took an arm from around Peter and grasped ahold of the bag.

“Not a bomb?” he asked before he let the weight come off of her fingers.

Saanvi stifled her immediate reaction of offense. This was a different culture they were stood in the presence of. A bomb was a real threat. Probably even an everyday one.

“No,” she said. “It’s a gift. A thank you. For saving us.”

Johnny narrowed his icy blue gaze and finally accepted the bag. He turned back to Peter. He murmured something, still not turning either of them around, but Saanvi heard the rustle of paper as he replaced the mug in Peter’s hands with the bag.

“Go on,” Johnny said softly.

Saanvi knew the second Peter saw the picture because his shoulders shook harder than ever and he threw the whole bag down on the counter.

He was out of Johnny’s grip in barely a heartbeat.

He picked Saanvi up like she was nothing, and the tears on his face—smeared against her cheek with a few of her own—were impossibly warm.

“Thank you,” he said hoarsely into her ear.

“No,” Saanvi said, bringing her arms up around his neck. “Thank _you_.”

Peter’s name was Peter Benjamin Parker and he’d been named for his uncle. His dad and his brother had been close, then distant, then close again when Peter had been born.

His uncle had been so touched to have Peter bear his name, even though, according to their religion and culture, it wasn’t good luck to have done that.

Peter said that he thought that maybe, in some way, his naming had written his uncle’s fate.

They were closer than Saanvi could ever have imagined. His uncle was the one who had bullied him into submitting an application for Midtown Science & Tech, a prestigious local highschool designed to support exceptional students for STEM fields.

They couldn’t afford the tuition, but Ben Parker had helped Peter fill out all the scholarship paperwork, had read through personal statements with him, and had promised him that if he didn’t get in, everything would still be okay, he’d still be fantastic at whatever he set his mind to.

Ben Parker’s brother had been a scientist. He’d set a high bar and Ben had, in his memory, held Peter to an equally high standard.

He’d been the one who’d taught Peter not to give up. To think creatively.

Peter remembered sitting with him, piecing together old radios and towers upon towers of Legos.

He smiled as his thumbs made circles on the sides of the polished frame.

He said nothing about Spiderman. But Johnny Storm’s presence somehow made Spiderman’s all the more real in that cramped little kitchen.

“I’m sorry,” Peter eventually said. “I’m kinda notorious for my dramatics. Not just among y’all at SI. My partners sent Johnny to stay with me for a minute because he’s uh, how to say—”

“Relatable?” Johnny offered. “Caring? Charismatic? Handsome? Always there for you in your hour of need?”

“—literally the only other available mutant right now,” Peter finished to Johnny’s offense. “And it does kind of help to have someone around who gets it more than regular people.”

Johnny huffed and announced that if all he was there for was to be an armchair, he was going to go burn the couch.

Peter caught him and told him that he was just joking, chill out.

There was a joke in there. But Peter was tired; he didn’t reach for it, and so no one else did either.

“You’re coming back, right?” Himani finally managed to ask. “You’re not leaving, SI are you? We can invent a memory loss machine like the Men In Black one, Peter, I will not hesitate—”

Peter laughed.

“No, no,” he said. “Ease off the brakes. I’m coming back. I just needed some time to sleep and uh, get lectured by the multiverse apparently.”

“He’s so fucking tall, Pete,” Johnny interrupted. “Why aren’t you tall?”

Peter’s face went sour and for a moment, Saanvi thought he was going to throw the frame in his hands right into Johnny’s head.

“Anyways,” Peter said pointedly. “Mr. Stark told me to take a week, the Tall Guy told me to take a week, so I think I’m gonna take another week. Possibly more since my therapist is, uh.”

Is, uh?

“Furious?” Johnny supplied once again. “Agitated beyond belief? Barely keeping it together? Human magma?”

“She’s calling the last week a ‘regression,’’ Peter said diplomatically. “And _no_ , Johnny. She’s not angry. It’s her job not to be angry.”

Johnny lolled around on the couch.

“Yeah, that’s what they all say,” he said. “But you can see it in their eyes that they want to find a throat and rip it—”

“Jonathan,” Peter said. “Therapists. Not werewolves, remember?”

Johnny hunkered down behind the cushions.

“That’s what they want you to think,” he muttered.

Peter turned long-sufferingly to the rest of them.

“Thanks for doing this,” he said. “I appreciate you guys. It means—it means a lot.”

No, no, anytime.

“Okay, but the multiverse, though,” Ave said.

“I think we’re done here,” Bo announced. “Glad to have you back in one piece, Parker. Thrilled that there’s a reason for all your weird-ass habits. Sorry for violently invading your privacy, like woah. Your aunt is hella dope by the way—”

“Oh, you met her?” Peter asked.

“Okay, but this multiverse thing,” Ave blurted out over them and Leo’s throat-slicing gestures. “Are like, S3 and Kiddo and Little Spidey part of it? Are they all Peters like you? Is that why they don’t have names? How do you commune with them? Hey, actually, how did you find them, huh?”

“We’ll see you at work, then, Peter?” Himani asked.

“I will see you at work,” Peter said.

“No, no,” Ave said as Leo spread out his long arms and started walking her back towards the door like a man bringing in a plane on a runway. “Can we talk to one, Peter? Like, the tall guy, maybe??? Just for like, two seconds—just to take a sample—”

Peter closed the door behind them and left them all out in the hall.

“I think that went well,” Himani said. Ave clawed hands at the door in anguish.

Saanvi hadn’t seen her this awake in weeks.

“I think so too,” she agreed.

“GUYS,” Ave interrupted, squirming between Leo and Bo, “There’s a _multiverse_. And Parker’s a _conduit_. How are you not freaking out right now?”

Oh, easy.

Because Saanvi failed physics twice.

Anyways.

Homeward bound?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay this was supposed to be the last chapter but I'm doing one more because the Flow demands it.


	5. getting home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You look like superhero,” Himani said.  
> Peter’s mask turned to her and he made those wide white eye shields expand and then narrow.  
> “You got me confused with the old folks,” he said. “I’m a vigilante. That’s v-i-g-l-a—wait, I’m missing a ‘i.’ Rewind. That’s v-i-g-l-i—hold up, no. That’s not it. I got this, don’t worry, I’ve practiced—give me one more go. Okay, vigilante. V-i-g—”  
>  _“Peter.”_

They went back to work.

The labs were covered in plastic sheets and they were all moved up several stories to share facilities with Lab 65 until the lower part of the building was once again habitable.

Peter took an extra day to show back up to work, and somehow, when he did, it was with burns on his face that didn’t look like they were inflicted by the building.

Saanvi suspected instead that they were inflicted by a certain Human Torch.

His team, however, celebrated his return with flailing limbs and some kind of dance that resembled that one scene from _My Neighbor Totoro_ where the kids try to make a bunch of seeds grow.

Peter took this with a flat expression. He sipped at his coffee.

He waited until the ritual was over and submitted to being poked and prodded and harassed and, eventually, hugged by little Bautista who remembered him picking her up from under the main office’s desk and carrying her out to safety.

He endured all of this and then announced that he fucking hated Lab 65 and needed everyone to get the hell off of him so that he could go cleanse his new shared office of the creature that was haunting it.

Lovett told him that, regretfully, Mrs. Poppy Krueger had survived two exorcisms already.

Peter sipped at his coffee more intensely than ever, then abandoned his staff with the order not to burn shit until he’d returned.

It was like nothing had happened. Everything had gone back to normal, except that now when Saanvi looked at Peter’s shoulders, she swore she could see lines of webbing.

But that was just her imagination.

Peter didn’t talk about Spiderman. Even weeks after the whole thing going down. He didn’t talk origin stories, he didn’t explain how he’d met Johnny or his other Spiderpeople. He said nothing.

It was shocking, actually, how careful he was about this kind of thing.

Saanvi didn’t realize the full extent of it until she found a phone on the table that someone had left behind. She tried to open it to find a name to attach it to only to find the device locked down tighter than a fortress.

Turning it on led to a lock screen overlaying another layer of lock screen.

Peter explained to her sweetly when she handed it back to him that he was a paranoid motherfucker and had a password for every app.

That was…not normal.

Peter smiled wide at her.

It took another week after the phone for Saanvi to finally see the suit.

It was after work and the staff had abandoned them all for greener pastures. Leo and Himani were arguing over their estimates for the pH values of various cheeses in the main, mostly empty, lab. Saanvi had popped in to ask them when they were going to catch their trains.

She didn’t like to go home alone. It was a little silly. But it was comforting to walk out of work with friends.

“We leave once this score is settled,” Himani said.

Saanvi rephrased to her question to ‘when will the score be settled?’ Leo continued to tap away at his phone for answers.

“Oh. Y’all are still here.”

The three of them looked back to see Peter in the doorway. His throat was red and black. For a second, Saanvi flashed back to a burning room and blood dripping down his face through clouds of smoke and exploding glass—but then she came back to the orange light of the lab.

Peter cocked his head.

Himani and Leo gaped.

“You got a little, uh, skin showing there, Tiger,” Leo said, pointing awkwardly at his own neck.

Peter blinked.

“I am aware,” he said.

Obviously he was. This guy triple locked his desk drawers, Saanvi had come to learn.

“Are you? Going out?” Leo tried.

Peter cocked his head again.

“Mr. Stark is meeting me here,” he said. “JARVIS said everyone had clocked out.”

Ah.

Right. That was because they had.

“We can leave?” Saanvi offered.

Peter’s face turned towards her and, in the dying light, he looked like a statue. Unblinking. Smooth skin under his eyes.

Then he smirked.

The Spidersuit was an engineering masterpiece.

No, for real.

It was soft and thin—god, so thin. Peter held out a red arm with black webs streaking down it to meet at the neat black cuffs fit snuggly around his wrists. Little pulses of light blinked through the webbing as his suit’s systems came on board.

Somehow, it had never occurred to Saanvi that the suit was more than a fancy piece of spandex.

Peter had built himself a computer to wear.

“I used to just use my phone,” he told them pleasantly, happy to let them touch and trace and admire. “But I live on the edge of 7% battery pretty much all the time, so it was smarter to put shit directly into the suit.”

“How?” Himani asked. “It’s so thin?”

Peter huffed.

“I’m a materials engineer,” he said, “You think I suffered through that Master’s for shits and giggles?”

“I thought you suffered through that Master’s to save the whales,” Himani said.

Peter had no retort for that, so he pouted and took his hand back.

“Are all the suits like this?” Leo asked. “Did you make them all?”

Peter turned away and shrugged.

“Damn, Pete,” Leo said. “You’re a renaissance man, huh?”

Peter rubbed harshly at the back of his neck. Saanvi pursed her lips so that she didn’t smile at him when he was being bashful.

“Can you put on the mask?” she asked.

Peter peeked back at her and considered it with sharp eyes, then closed them and nodded.

Without the giant hoodie and jeans obscuring the view, the Spiderman suit was really something to see. Peter’s mask transformed him into someone who Saanvi almost felt like she didn’t know.

He held his shoulders differently. His chin went up. His feet stood a shoulder’s width apart.

It was like looking up at Captain America backed by the orange glow of sunset—except Peter’s pride was cinched in at his tight waist. It burst out into heavy, heavily muscled thighs and then came back in in the curve of his oddly delicate ankles.

The soles of the feet of the suit were flexible—soft. Surprisingly thin like the rest of it.

Peter didn’t say, but Saanvi thought that he needed everything to be as thin as it could be so that he could use his…enhancements? Powers? She didn’t know what they were, but she got the feeling that sticky hands didn’t do well with a thick barrier between themselves and their intended surface.

“You look like superhero,” Himani said.

Peter’s mask turned to her and he made those wide white eye shields expand and then narrow.

“You got me confused with the old folks,” he said. “I’m a vigilante. That’s v-i-g—”

It was surreal how familiar that suddenly cocky, smooth-talking voice was. Saanvi couldn’t believe that she’d never recognized it before in Youtube clips or shouting on the news.

“L-a—wait, I’m missing a ‘i.’ Rewind. That’s v-i-g-l-i—hold up, no. That’s not it. I got this, don’t worry, I’ve practiced—give me one more go. Okay, vigilante. V-i-g—”

“ _Peter_.”

The room went silent.

Peter turned fluidly on those thin, soft soles towards Mr. Stark’s silhouette in the doorway.

“Hello, concerned citizen,” he said.

Mr. Stark glared pointedly at Saanvi, Himani, and Leo. Peter’s shoulders twitched and he fidgeted with his hands.

“I can? Explain?” he said.

Mr. Stark stared into his soul.

Peter slouched further and further down in the chair in Mr. Stark’s personal lab ( _Mr. Stark’s personal lab, holy shit_ ) and, with no sense of self-preservation whatsoever, made his hands talk to each other while Mr. Stark lectured the living shit out of all of them.

He was going on about security clearances and nondisclosure agreements before he turned around and cut himself off with a “ _SPIDERKID.”_

Peter shoved his hands under his ass and hummed innocently.

Saanvi was gobsmacked.

He’d always been so shy. He was always so shy and agitated and skittish. And yet there Peter was, settled in next to her, acting such as to fit after the colon of ‘irreverent’ in the dictionary. 

“You,” Mr. Stark warned. “Are going to find yourself in the basement very soon, sir.”

“Oh, just ‘Spidey’ is fine, big guy,” Peter said.

Mr. Stark’s jaw ticked.

Himani’s eyes locked on Saanvi’s own. They could not get any more urgent.

“I’m calling Wade fucking Wilson,” Mr. Stark said, “And I’m paying him to go assassinate aliens on Mars.”

Peter snickered.

“Wade would _love_ to go to space,” he said.

“You’re going with him,” Mr. Stark said. “I’m sending you both.”

Peter’s eyes went flat.

“I hate space,” he said.

“You’re going,” Mr. Stark said. “ _Or_ you’re finding that bit of respect you lost on the way to work this morning.”

“I buried it,” Peter deadpanned.

“Then go dig it up,” Mr. Stark told him scathingly. “And while you’re at it, keep your goddamn face covered or else we’ll be doing this _again_.”

Peter scrambled all the way up his seat.

“No,” he said. “Last time this happened it was _your fault_. You just showed up at my school. Why is it fine when you do it, but when I do it, it’s irresponsible?”

Mr. Stark blinked slowly.

Peter’s accusatory finger bent a little.

“That doesn’t count,” he said.

“Uh-huh,” Mr. Stark said. “Sure, it doesn’t. Listen, Pete. I get that I half-fucked this one up for you but—”

“What’s going on here?”

Saanvi almost died.

Colonel Rhodes had entered the building. _Colonel Rhodes_.

He was holding a—a? Braided plant?

“Oh hell no,” Mr. Stark said, “No. Get out. I’m not dealing with another one. There’s no space, Rhodey.”

Colonel Rhodes ignored him in favor of surveying the parties in the guilty chairs. Peter perked and waved at him.

“War Machine, my man,” he gushed. “Is that another ficus, by chance?”

Colonel Rhodes’s eyes locked on him like a target.

“No,” Mr. Stark said before anyone could say anything more. “No, no, no. Peter, silence. You’re banished. Rhodey, he doesn’t actually care. He literally doesn’t care—”

“I’m thinking about getting one,” Peter lied obnoxiously. “But my friend says they aren’t good indoor plants.”

Colonel Rhodes’s eyebrows dropped.

“NO,” Mr. Stark said. “OUT. Out. All of you. Get. Scram. You’re dismissed.”

“Which friend tells you such _lies_?” Colonel Rhodes hissed in Peter’s direction.

“MJ,” Peter said.

“She knows better,” Colonel Rhodes said.

Peter hummed.

Mr. Stark decided, for whatever reason, that that was his breaking point. He told them to leave, watch their mouths, say nothing, or be ejected.

“That,” Himani said when they were out behind the building, “Was _amazing_.”

Peter wriggled in glee. His whole body seemed to ripple with the suit.

“Come with me to meet the others properly,” he said.

“Right now?” Leo asked.

Peter vibrated.

“But what about Ave?” Saanvi asked.

“Ave is my worst nightmare,” Peter said. “No scientists. Just friends. Here, come with me. I want you to meet my people. You’re my people now.”

They were his--?

Oh.

His people. Like Johnny Storm. Like May Parker and his two partners.

They’d joined the ranks of those guys.

That was. Hoo. That was—wow. Saanvi didn’t know if she was ready for this.

“We already met them,” she tried to say diplomatically. “And I’m sure you guys have things to do, Pete. We don’t want to slow you down.”

Peter’s white eyes were empty. He made them close once.

“Or? Not?” Himani said. “I’m not doing anything tonight?”

She looked up at Leo for support but Leo was frozen still stiff with shock.

“Are you gonna do a multiverse thing?” he asked.

“Psh,” Peter said.

But that was all he said. He continued to wait.

“Okay?” Saanvi said. “But only if it’s not too far out of the way, I’ve got a train to—”

“You live by me, I’ll take you home,” Peter said. “Perfect, let’s go.”

Wait. Let’s go? Let’s go where? How?

How were they gonna go?

“Gonna run. Hell’s Kitchen first,” Peter said.

Sorry, they were gonna _what_? To _where_?

“I’m not ready to die,” Himani whimpered.

Peter just threw his head back and laughed.

The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen—er, rather, the guy copying the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen was about six feet tall with huge arms and shoulders. Peter left them all panting in an alley that reeked of piss and beer to go pounce on him.

He then introduced them to him and called the man ‘Dave.’

This was Dave.

Dave who patrolled two weeknights and on weekends.

Dave who _took off his mask_ and smiled like a normal dude with mousy hair and stubble and said ‘Hi, I’m Dave.’

His hair was a disaster, but he was totally fine.

“Red’s approved him,” Peter said. “So we keep him around. But mostly because his kid’s a biter.”

“She is, I’m afraid, still a biter,” Dave said, refitting his helmet on snugly. “But she has stopped biting people during soccer, so you know, baby steps.”

“It’s healthy,” Peter said. “You seen Bitsy or 3PO?”

“Not today,” Dave said. “They’re on the chat, though. Something about a dead parrot?”

A what?

“I love that skit,” Peter said seriously. “Is Wade doing it?”

Dave touched his stubbled chin in confusion.

“Doing what?” he asked.

“The dead parrot,” Peter said.

“Why would he be doing the dead parrot?” Dave asked.

Peter patted at him affectionately.

“No reason, I love you, Dave, these are my friends, please put them on your list. That’s Gupta, Malik, and Stanton, okay bye!”

Dave was abandoned.

Peter took them all sprinting back the way they’d come.

He took pity upon them poor humans a while later and let them rest on a rooftop that Saanvi hadn’t realized they’d climbed and needed to not look over for her own wellbeing. She was learning from Himani’s example.

Himani had wrapped herself around Peter post-height induced trauma and had started peeking around his arm at the phone in his hand.

“Peter,” she said. “What is happening?”

Peter seemed to finally realize she was there and began typing hurriedly into his phone.

“I’m asking where people are,” he said.

“That doesn’t look like asking,” Himani said.

“They ain’t my staff,” Peter said.

“That one just called you a ‘fuck,’” Himani said, pointing.

“It’s a term of endearment—ah, there we go,” Peter said.

Saanvi had already met Wade, she didn’t need to meet Wade again, even if he was in much better spirits this time. He was cooing at his own phone when Peter launched himself at him and wrangled an arm around his neck.

DP didn’t so much as move. It was like Peter wasn’t even there.

Peter wriggled around on his back so that his own chin cleared Wade’s shoulder.

He snorted at Wade’s phone screen.

“Red’s in a mood,” he said.

“We should bottle it,” Wade told him. “Bottle it and call it ‘liquid courage.’”

“More like ‘liquid idiot,’” Peter said. “Hey, put my friends on your list.”

Wade turned back and cocked his head.

“I know two,” he said. “Who’s the one with the specs?”

Leo’s hand went up to adjust his glasses immediately. He caught himself doing it and forced his hand down.

“Stanton,” Peter said. “That’s s-t-a-t—”

Wade turned to him curiously.

“N?” he said. “There’s an ‘n’ in there somewhere, no?”

“Fuck. S-t-a-t-n—”

Wade snickered.

“S-t-a-t-n,” he read out, making a show of typing it into his phone.

Peter set his jaw at him through his mask.

“Y’all are rude,” he said. “Everyone knows I can’t spell. It’s Stanton. Just make it happen, asshole.”

“R-e-c-c—”

“Shut the fuck up, W-a-d-e Wils- _dick_.”

The disrespect. Saanvi covered her gasp with her hands.

Wade just laughed and said that he got it, Spiderkid. Now clear off, he had work to do.

If Peter’s flagrant disrespect of his teammates didn’t kill her, all this jumping around would. Saanvi was sure of it.

She hadn’t been this out of breath in years.

What was wrong with taking the train?

“Can’t wear this on the train,” Peter told them, gesturing to his suit. “I mean, that’s not true, I’ve definitely taken the train in this, but then I gotta be like ‘no, I’m not askin’ for money, no, I’m not the guy outside of Pent station, no, I don’t need your seat’—folks got questions, you know?”

No.

Saanvi did not. But she believed him. Even if her shins were going to kill her in the morning.

On the upside she now knew she could, in a crisis, climb a chain link fence and scale a building. Ha. Her dad would be _horrified_.

“Why are you giving them our names?” Himani panted.

Peter jerked back towards them from the edge of the new roof. His phone chirped away in his hands.

“Oh,” he said. “I’m gettin’ you on their defend lists. You know, in case anything happens again, but I’m not there.”

Alright, now why couldn’t he have said that from the start?

Peter did not understand the question.

“I thought it was clear,” he said.

Saanvi sighed.

“Your IQ drops like 20 points when you’re in that suit,” Himani told him.

Peter was offended.

“I think you mean ‘goes up 20 points,’” he said.

“No, definitely down,” Leo confirmed.

Peter’s eyes narrowed.

He made them jump onto a train.

 _A moving train_.

Saanvi almost cried. Peter put his hands on her shoulders afterwards, though, and told her she’d done great and wow, the three of them were so good at this! He’d have to teach them how to do webbing next.

Saanvi had never heard a worse idea.

Ever.

Himani and Leo agreed with that one.

There would be no web. Ever.

You hear that Parker?

 _Ever_.

Stop laughing, you jerk.

A chorus of ‘heyyyyy’ greeted them in the Bronx. Bitsy was wrapped around a stop sign and the other two were linked together trying to pull him off it.

A guy in a bodega window across the street pinched the bridge of his nose and picked up his phone. He walked away just shaking his head.

Saanvi wondered if this happened often.

“Sup, y’all?” Peter said.

“You’re back!” Bitsy said. “B said you looked like a ‘sorry sack of shit.’”

“That’s a bad word,” Little Spidey snapped.

“You’re a bad word,” Bitsy told her.

“I missed you so much,” S3 said tearfully. “That man’s called the cops on us twice.”

Saanvi looked back towards the bodega window.

“Then clear out,” Peter said. “Bitsy let go of that.”

“I _can’t_ ,” Bitsy said brightly.

“Stuck,” S3 said desperately.

“More liked fucked,” Little Spidey sighed.

Peter held his chin and examined Bitsy’s sad, sad eyes.

“I got something for this,” he said.

Great.

Now they were running from the cops.

Saanvi hadn’t signed up for this.

“Stealing a stop sign is a _crime_ , Peter,” she reminded him a so-called ‘safe’ distance away from the scene of the stolen item.

“We’re vigilantes,” Peter reminded her with Bitsy’s wrists in his hands.

Bitsy pleaded with him not to break them. His mom would know right away and then he’d be grounded forever, and then she’d know he was Spiderman, and she’d send him back to live with his great-aunt in Puerto Rico, and he didn’t speak Spanish that well yet.

Himani observed that Bitsy and Peter had the same tendency to not shut up when it benefited them. Leo thought that it maybe took a certain kind of person to steal a stop sign and then feel guilty about it.

Saanvi had decided that it took a certain level of stupid and reckless and _oh my god what’s wrong with you_ to become Spiderman.

Little Spidey told her that those were her conclusions, too. 

“But you’re still here,” Saanvi said.

Little Spidey asked her what her point was.

Saanvi was suddenly very, very tired.

“Miles,” Peter said out of nowhere, “You need. To calm. Down.”

Bitsy sniffed like he was going to cry instead.

Miles. This boy’s name was Miles. And he was stuck. And fourteen, if that.

UGH.

Fine.

“Move,” Saanvi told Peter. When he hissed at her, she jerked his way and made him hiss louder. He scrambled away from her, though, so she could sit down where he’d been and gently take Bitsy’s—no, Miles’s—impossibly thin wrists into her own hands.

“You’re okay,” she told him. “Just a little scared, right? Here, let’s try to unstick, one at a time. I’m gonna pull just ever so slightly, okay?”

Miles’s white eyes turned back to her.

“One at a time?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Let’s pretend they aren’t even stuck,” she said. “Tell me, friend. Are you stupid and brave?”

Miles’s eyes widened and he cocked his head.

“Probably,” he said.

She could feel the tension in his hands loosening already.

“Is that what makes you sticky?” she asked him. “Can you purr, too?”

Miles’s eyes expanded until they couldn’t anymore.

“I can purr,” he confirmed.

Baby Spidey was removed from stop sign. Saanvi deserved a Nobel Prize.

Little Miles swore to defend her with his life.

This was unnecessary. He was fourteen. Saanvi didn’t need protecting by a fourteen year old. Peter told her to let the kid have it.

She told him that she’d had enough of his weird spider brood and his weird spider things and all his stupid crimes. She was done.

Spiderman wasn’t special. He was a fuckin’ nuisance. Saanvi was getting a spray bottle and keeping it on her desk to punish him for the misdemeanors he committed in the office.

Vigilante, her ass.

“Take this thing back and web it or whatever into place so that people don’t get into accidents,” she ordered, shaking the stop sign.

It was harder than it looked. It was kind of heavy.

And Peter, for some reason, thought that the whole thing was funny. He grinned so big she could almost see it through his mask.

“Whatever you want, boo,” he said.

She got the spray bottle immediately after Peter dumped her off in the alley by her home. She bought it with her hands shaking and dropping coins all over the counter.

Web-travel?

Bad.

The worst.

Horrible.

Peter Parker was her friend.

She loved him. She felt for his aches and for the responsibilities that he shouldered and she would put her whole weight into holding him up.

He was amazing. He was Spiderman.

But god help her, he was just Peter Benjamin Parker, too, and that guy? That weird friend of hers?

He was a piece of work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we made it!! 
> 
> I hope y'all had a good time! I sure did. Thanks to everyone who's read and left comments! Y'all are dolls and I love, love, love to read your reactions. Hope you're all staying safe out there and I will see you soon for the next installment! 
> 
> (shameless plug for what Red's up in arms about: he and Blindspot just had a moment in the latest piece in my Blindspot series. The most recent fic is called **know thine kin.** So if you want to know why he's in a mood, go check that piece/series out)


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